Content, Disciplinary, and Critical Literacies in the C3 and Common Core

The Common Core Standards (CCS) for English Language Arts and College, Career, and Civic Life Framework (C3) require social studies educators to reconsider connections between literacy and history teaching. In this article we examine three perspectives on literacy teaching: content area literacy, disciplinary literacy, and critical literacy. While some scholars see these perspectives as contradictory or in competition, we demonstrate how content, disciplinary, and critical literacy teaching can complement each other and facilitate teaching to and beyond the CCS standards and C3 framework in intermediate, middle school, and high school history instruction. Our article includes teaching examples as well as appendices of teacher resources.