Constructing an Understanding of Undergraduate Disciplinary Reading: An Analysis of Contemporary Scholarship

This article presents a summation of the field’s past contributions to understanding the nature of undergraduate reading practices and meaning making processes in relation to contemporary perspectives of disciplinary literacies. In presenting a synthesis of over 40 studies across interdisciplinary journals, the goal was to construct a generalized understanding of the field’s conversations about undergraduate reading and the extent to which disciplinary literacy approaches foreground them. Analysis revealed that while the past work of postsecondary scholars has considerably influenced the field’s knowledge base of postsecondary reading issues, attempts to understand reading within authentic disciplinary contexts remains generally obscured from modern prospects of disciplinary literacies, offering opportunities for advancing the next 50 years of reading scholarship.