Every content area has norms and practices for how people construct and share knowledge. These vary across subjects but often include establishing hypotheses, providing evidence for claims, and explaining one’s reasoning to others. Teachers name these norms and practices, provide scaffolds, model, and offer opportunities for students to use the norms and practices. These norms and practices support students to engage productively in content-area learning.
We use the term “norms” to refer to a widely shared and accepted standard for work in a discipline. Subject-specific norms exist outside of individual classrooms and are often the standards of a discipline. This is not determined by a single teacher in a classroom, but by the broad community of disciplinary experts. It is through routines or practices that a norm is regularly carried out in a particular context and content area.
Norms, practices, and routines for discourse and work are important for supporting students to engage in content area work. They make explicit for students the ways of thinking and working that are privileged by the disciplines and help position students as competent sense-makers in the content area. However, teachers must recognize when and how norms and routines for discourse and work may marginalize children. Because content-area norms and routines often reflect dominant power and privilege, they can marginalize the skills and perspectives some students bring to classrooms. When choosing and implementing norms and routines for discourse and work, teachers should consider carefully which norms and routines to introduce, whom they privilege, and how to manage their use in ways that structure students’ work equitably.
The diagram below breaks down work that teachers do when they are introducing norms and routines for discourse. This breakdown, or decomposition, helps teacher educators to break down the practice into a set of parts that can be observed and practiced.
