Teachers must have full mastery of their discipline in order to effectively teach learners. This means understanding the essentials of the discipline, the core concepts, critical tools, modes of inquiry, and how the discipline constructs knowledge so that the teacher can communicate the nature of the disciple to students. To achieve this, teachers should undertake a deep analysis of their subject to understand its central concepts. To this end, I created a “Knowledge Menu,” based on the work of Carol Tomlinson and Joseph Renzulli – an exploration of the central concepts of the discipline of English to guide my curriculum design.
Teachers also need to understand the interconnectedness of their discipline, the central concepts, skills, ways of thinking, and ways of being that characterize practitioners in their discipline to build these skills in their students. In my graduate work, I have spent countless hours researching the nature of the discipline and what that structure means for instructional practice. One of the results of that research was this Concept Map which illustrates the interconnected concepts underlying a novel study unit in 11th grade English. Understanding these connections and these fundamental concepts enables me as a teacher to make connections explicit for students, connecting instruction with previous knowledge and building a disciplinary knowledge base for students as they continue their journey as lifelong learners.
How has the discipline contributed to our understanding of the world? What truths are revealed through the disciplinary lens? Through these deep understandings of his or her content area, the teacher is able to make the discipline accessible and meaningful to all students, and bring its lens to bear on cross-disciplinary or non-academic problems. In my class, I regularly challenge students to make personal and socio-cultural connections with the literature we read to understand the relevance of literature. I believe that the discipline of English offers students the opportunity to explore and understand our shared humanity, and I reiterate the importance of this all year long. While teaching Siddhartha, for example, I have students explore the concepts of spirituality and self-discovery — concepts that are central to the novel study, but also important to students as they continue their own journeys of self-discovery and maturation. From this, students created some of the most amazing creative analytical work I have ever seen.
