Judith Dunkerly-Bean

Missing the Savoir for the Connaissance Disciplinary and Content Area Literacy as Regimes of Truth

This conceptual review addresses the bifurcation of content area and disciplinary literacy by examining each as regimes of truth. We look specifically at the ways in which both approaches comprise, in Foucault’s terms, “regimes of truth” within their respective epistemological domains. Following a brief history of adolescent literacy, extant research is considered. By employing a theoretical framework based on Foucault’s notions of “connaissance” referring to a particular corpus of knowledge, and “savoir” or knowledge in general, research and discourse surrounding the current debate over content area literacy and disciplinary literacy are taken up to deconstruct stances within these domains with the aim of a reconstruction that captures the affordances of both. Suggestions for moving the field out of this binary through a collaborative focus on interdisciplinary approaches are discussed.