Developing a Model of Disciplinary Literacy Instruction for K 12 Engineering Education: Comparing the Literacy Practices of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (Fundamental)
One literacy based approach that has been shown to provide effective instruction for K 12 students generally, and students from underrepresented groups specifically, is Disciplinary Literacy Instruction (DLI) DLI utilizes knowledge of the ways advanced practitioners read, interpret, and generate discipline specific content in their professional environment to apprentice students in that field. Models of DLI teach students how to use the literacy practices, including disciplinary specific text genres, interpretive and evaluative frameworks, and socially situated activities, that are commonly employed by experts in a discipline [2] In other disciplines [3] [6] DLI models have been shown to aid teachers in making high quality, discipline specific content accessible to all students, including those from groups (i.e. racial and ethnic minorities and women) that, historically, have been underrepresented in STEM fields. This paper describes findings from comparative case study research that seeks to identify literacy practices that are used by expert engineers across a range of engineering disciplines. These literacy practices will be used to inform the development of a general model of DLI in engineering that can be employed by teachers to support K 12 and undergraduate engineering education.