“The Students Are . . . the Knowers”

Abstract

This chapter reports on teachers' disciplinary literacy planning within an online university-based disciplinary literacy course offered annually to preservice and practicing teachers working across subject areas and grade bands. Authors designed and taught the course and collected participants' work and reflections over 3 years (n=40). Results show that teachers productively engaged with conceptual and pedagogical tools of the course to develop disciplinary literacy approaches in their instructional planning. Compellingly, as teachers appropriated features of disciplinary literacy in their planning, they also tended to de-center themselves as the primary knowers of the classroom and more regularly positioned their students as knowers, underscoring the potential power of disciplinary literacy for teacher education. These findings are illustrated through a representative case of one early career preschool teacher.