Reading, writing, and reasoning through uncertainty: a literacy-driven approach to navigating uncertainty in science classrooms

This paper presents Student Uncertainty as a Pedagogical Resource (SUPeR), a literacy-based framework that integrates reading, writing, and discussion to help students navigate uncertainty as part of scientific inquiry. Grounded in disciplinary literacy, SUPeR treats uncertainty as both the object and the tool of literacy: students encounter ambiguity in texts, data, and dialogue, and use language to reason, interpret evidence, and construct meaning. Through five instructional phases—problematizing, material practice, argumentation, expert comparison, and reflection—students read to identify conflicting ideas, write to clarify reasoning, and talk to refine understanding. A fourth-grade electricity unit illustrates how literacy practices transform uncertainty into a resource for learning and inquiry. By centering reading, writing, and discourse in science, SUPeR fosters scientific literacy, deepens conceptual understanding, and cultivates students’ epistemic agency amid the uncertainties of scientific knowledge.