New Literacies Scholar: Spotlight on Elizabeth Birr Moje

Image source: U-M SOE faculty page

Dr. Elizabeth Birr Moje is a professor of Literacy, Language and Culture in the Educational Studies Department of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Moje started her career as a high school teacher of history, biology, and drama, and now focuses much of her research in Detroit schools, in predominantly Latinx communities.

This multidisciplinary background has certainly influenced Moje’s research, as she focuses her work on content-area, or disciplinary, literacies. She argues that students should be trained to think like experts in the discipline, because “each discipline has its own literacy and...by stripping away the one-size-fits-all literacy ‘strategies’ and engaging students in the way historians and scientists actually read and write, literacy learning will be central, no longer a side dish” (Peterson, no page number). Moje observes that a move towards disciplinary literacy -- and away from textbooks -- is more authentic and more engaging for students.

In Moje’s Ed-Talk, she calls for schools that treat students like apprentices in the disciplines they are studying. Of course, Moje admits, that stirs up other questions, like “What opportunities do teacher education and inservice professional development provide teachers to learn about the discursive basis of their subject matter?” and “How many disciplinary teachers have a deep understanding of the knowledge-producing practices of their discipline?’” (Peterson, no page number). Moje says that teacher training programs will need to evolve to prepare teachers for this kind of new literacy instruction.

Also explored in her Ed-Talk, Moje disrupts the idea that elementary school-aged students learn to read and older students read to learn: in fact, Moje says we never stop learning to read and we are always reading to learn. This reframing also invites us to see the wealth of background knowledge and experience that students draw from to “read the texts” they encounter in every aspect of their lives. When we recognize the expert literacies our students have already developed and invite those literacies into the classroom, we create what Moje and other researchers term a “third space.” Moje et al write: “this integration of knowledges and Discourses drawn from different spaces the construction of ‘third space’ that merges the ‘first space’ of people’s home, community, and peer networks with the ‘second space’ of the Discourses they encounter in more formalized institutions such as work, school, or church” (Moje et al, p. 41).

This honoring of “first spaces” positions Moje firmly within the sociocultural camp of literacy development. Moje’s work makes it clear that sociocultural approaches to literacy is not just good because of the general literacy development that results, and not just good because the diverse perspectives of students are welcomed and included (though that is of central importance to this work). According to Moje, sociocultural literacy instruction also helps students become disciplinary experts. What’s particularly striking is that, in their 2004 study, Moje et al focus their research on the science classroom -- a discipline that’s often (unjustly) seen as primarily technical -- and even within this context, Moje makes clear that a classroom that honors and welcomes students’ home literacy practices makes students better science students.

Connecting students' many literacies to grow expert thinkers across disciplines: what's more powerful than that?


Sources:

Moje, E. B. (2016). Ed-Talk: Developing Youth Literacies. American Educational Research Association. Retrieved on 10/10/19 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_J0-m3eHpo.

Moje, E. B., Ciechanowski, K. M., Kramer, K., Ellis, L., & Collazo, T. (2004). Working towards a third space in content area literacy: An examination of everyday funds of knowledge and Discourse. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(1), pg. 38-70.

Peterson, A. (2010). Elizabeth Birr Moje on “disciplinary literacy” and reading across the content areas. National Writing Project blog. Retrieved on 10/10/19 from: https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3041.

Completed as part of URI's EDC 532, Seminar in Digital Literacy