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Between common language and disciplinary difference: Secondary teachers talking about writing across the curriculum
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Between common language and disciplinary difference: Secondary teachers talking about writing across the curriculum

Michael D Carey
Research Square, Vol.8 September 2026
Research Square Company
2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-10826375/v1
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Preprint Version Open Access CC BY V4.0

Abstract

disciplinary literacy writing across the curriculum teacher professional learning student writing metalanguage secondary education
Whole-school approaches to writing often seek consistency, while disciplinary literacy emphasises the subject-specific ways in which knowledge is constructed and communicated. This qualitative case study examines how eight secondary teachers in an Australian school negotiated this tension within an interdisciplinary professional-learning initiative centred on student writing. Data comprised eight reflective interviews, contemporaneous project documents and meeting notes, and four focal artefact sets from History, Business, Science and English that brought together assessment tasks, rubrics, student responses and annotations made during professional discussion. Interview data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, with the focal artefacts examined through cross-case documentary analysis. The findings show that shared structures and terminology could provide useful points of entry across subjects without constituting a uniform literacy. Apparently common constructs such as evidence, analysis and persuasion acquired different meanings within disciplinary practices, while close examination of student texts helped make these expectations visible where teachers did not always articulate them abstractly. Working backwards from student responses also sometimes shifted attention from presumed student deficits to the design and alignment of tasks, scaffolds and rubrics. School-wide writing resources are most productive when they support cross-subject inquiry rather than standardising disciplinary writing, and artefact-centred professional dialogue can make subject-specific literacy expectations more explicit while retaining useful common metalanguage across the curriculum.

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