Disciplinary Literacy Versus Doing School

Within the context of schooling, conceptions of literacy are increasingly being associated with the capacity for learners to engage in disciplinary meaning making through face‐to‐face deliberation and dialogue. In this commentary, the author explores how a conversational infrastructure—meaning routines for talk, norms, scaffolds, and a repertoire of talk moves—can help teachers foster a discourse community in their classrooms. Such an infrastructure can support students of all backgrounds to explore, through discourse, how claims are made by members of a discipline, what counts as evidence, and the ground rules by which members of a knowledge‐building community can engage one another in justifying certain points of view while acknowledging alternatives. This vision is presented as an alternative to the unspoken rules and rituals that sociologists refer to as doing school, which serve to constrain academically productive talk in many classrooms.