Megin Charner-Laird

• Ed.D.
• Professor (Assistant) at Salem State University

This accessible book introduces a new theory of critical disciplinary literacy (CDL) that merges criticality and disciplinary literacy approaches in a cohesive and inclusive framework. There are unique hurdles in integrating critical and culturally sustaining approaches to literacy into specialized content area classrooms, but this book provides cl...

A revised and expanded edition that promotes inquiry and teaching practices to help students gain the discipline-specific literacy skills they need to succeed in college, the workplace, and the society of tomorrow. In this second edition of Disciplinary Literacy Inquiry and Instruction, Jacy Ippolito, Christina L. Dobbs, and Megin Charner-Laird up...

In this study, we consider how a group of six math and six science teachers from one high school collaborated to incorporate disciplinary literacy practices into their instruction. We followed the two STEM-focused teams of teachers from an initial, summer weeklong professional learning institute through their subsequent year of designing and implem...

Preparing the next generation of school leaders is an invigorating and ever-changing enterprise, but the past year and a half have brought more change and more of the fear and uncertainty change inspires than anyone could have anticipated (Superville, 2021). We, the co-directors and core faculty of educational leadership programs at Salem State Un...

The authors argue that disciplinary literacy is a relatively new conception of literacy skills in various content areas, and therefore jumping immediately to exemplary practices is unwise. Instead the authors recommend collaboration and inquiry as tools to generate and refine practices thoughtfully over time.

This chapter addresses the following guiding questions: What do leaders need to know about the literacy needs of adolescent learners? What are the differences between content-area and disciplinary literacy frameworks? How can the integration of content-area and disciplinary literacy instruction support adolescents’ literacy development? What are t...

What do you get when a high school English teacher, a middle school literacy coach, and an elementary school teacher realize that the old adage of “every teacher is a teacher of reading” misses the bigger picture? Jacy Ippolito, Christina Dobbs, and Megin Charner-Laird have spent the last decade trying to answer that question, working with teache...

This brief article outlines a professional learning model that supports teachers in learning about and implementing disciplinary literacy instruction.

Teacher teams are increasingly common in urban schools. In this study, we analyze teachers’ responses to teams in six high-poverty schools. Teachers used two criteria to assess teams’ goodness of fit in meeting the demands of their work: whether their teams helped them teach better and whether the team contributed to a better school. Their response...

While much has been written in the last decade about the need for disciplinary literacy instruction and its potential to support higher levels of student learning and communication (Fang & Coatoam, 2013; Hynd-Shanahan, 2013; Lee & Spratley, 2010; Moje, 2007, 2008, 2015; Shanahan, 2012; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, 2014), relatively little is known ab...

"Investigating Disciplinary Literacy" provides practical, research-based guidance for teachers seeking to strengthen students’ reading, writing, and communication skills in subjects from the humanities to the sciences. The authors present a framework for conducting professional development cycles based on disciplinary literacy-related learning and...

This study investigates the experiences of teacher leaders working to facilitate professional learning communities (PLCs) focused on inquiry into disciplinary literacy at the high school level. Specifically, we examine the moves that team leaders made to preserve focus and learning within their PLCs and how participants experienced their leadership...

In order to be effective, professional development efforts are most promising if they are context specific and focus on supporting collaboration. Increasingly, schools initiate professional development with small groups of teachers, with the intention that the effects of the initiatives will spill over to other school personnel. This study follows...

Secondary teachers nationwide are encouraged by the Common Core State Standards and recent research to enact disciplinary literacy instruction. However, little is known about how teachers make sense of teaching disciplinary literacy skills to adolescents. To what extent might adolescents still need the kinds of foundational support provided by what...

Explicit professional learning about disciplinary literacy combined with tools that increase collaborative capacity form a powerful combination that leads to inventive and invested participation in implementing disciplinary literacy in a variety of classrooms.

Purpose: We examine how uncertainty, both about students and the context in which they are taught, remains a persistent condition of teachers’ work in high-poverty, urban schools. We describe six schools’ organizational responses to these uncertainties, analyze how these responses reflect open- versus closed-system approaches, and examine how this...

Background/Context Many strategies to improve failing urban schools rest on efforts to improve leadership within the school. Effective school-based leadership depends not only on the activities of the principal, but also on teachers’ efforts to address school-wide challenges. Research has shown that the principal is pivotal in such ventures, but we...

An initiative to improve the content-area literacy skills of all students at a Massachusetts high school demonstrates the important role teacher leaders play in bridging the various elements of school improvement efforts.

This article considers the ways in which 17 novice teachers define and describe effective urban teaching and the stark contrasts that these teachers draw between effective urban teaching and effective teaching. The authors find that descriptions of students played a considerable role when participants made distinctions between effective teaching an...