Disciplinary literacy and multimodal text design in physical education

This article argues that scholarship on literacy in and across the disciplines has disproportionately focused on the core subjects of English, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies rather than on “specialist” subjects such as Physical Education. This disparity in emphasis has provided little guidance to specialist teachers seeking to understand and address the literacy demands of subject areas that often privilege an expanded conception of literacy. To illustrate the affordances of such analysis for PE teachers as well as their literacy colleagues, the reading demands of a particular multimodal text from PE—a three-part basketball play—are presented in light of key themes from the US Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy. Complexities related to collective, embodied, and sequential meaning construction are explored. Recommendations for instruction and professional collaboration are shared.