Literacy pedagogical content knowledge in the secondary curriculum

In this paper, I address the challenge of raising the consciousness of prospective secondary teachers about their roles in supporting their students in the advanced literacy demands of their subject specializations. I argue that to better equip them in supporting the conceptual development of diverse groups of students, prospective high school teachers need, as part of their pedagogical content knowledge, an understanding of the pervasive role of language and literacy in learning. I illustrate how, after even a short but intense input, one group of prospective teachers with no prior knowledge of language developed a capacity to plan content area learning with an informed consciousness of the role of language and literacy in the learning of diverse groups of their students. The continued development of literacy pedagogical content knowledge, I argue, will be crucial to the strength of those pillars of government reform related to lifting the academic achievement of adolescents in disadvantaged schools.