Mathematical Disciplinary Literacy: Enhancing Teacher Pedagogical Agency to Support Students’ Written Explanations

ABSTRACT This article discusses the benefits of adopting disciplinary literacy approaches in Mathematics. We propose disciplinary literacy practices foreground mathematical teachers' expertise and knowledge thereby enabling them to adapt generic literacy approaches to better address the specific literacy demands of the discipline. Specifically, we discuss how students' ability to write explanatory paragraphs (a component of a mathematical report) can be facilitated by the joint construction of writing and the provision of specific feedback on students' writing. Such an approach supports students' undersatnding of both mathematical concepts and the literacy demands of mathematical explanations. We draw on examples from a Year 7 Mathematics classroom teacher in regional South Australia, who participated in a disciplinary literacy 7–9 professional learning program. Analysis of teacher reflections and student work samples revealed improvements in students' writing of mathematical explanations, including increased use of discipline‐specific vocabulary and sequencing connectives, emergent use of passive voice and expanded noun groups, and shifts from reflective recount to explanatory writing. We argue that integrating disciplinary literacy approaches into Mathematics instruction, which can include genre‐aware modeling and targeted formative feedback on writing, offers a coherent framework to apprentice students into disciplinary ways of knowing and thinking.