Disciplinary literacy refers to the specific literacies required to understand and engage with materials written using the semiotic repertoire unique to a given field (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2017). Traditionally, it bridges language learning and content knowledge, emphasizing modes of communication, such as graphs and charts in the social sciences, that are integral to understanding specific classroom subjects. This proposal extends the concept of disciplinary literacy to include programming as an important literacy for Digital Humanities (DH) education, particularly when integrated with the established framework of computational thinking (Wing, 2006).

Over the past two years, cohorts in the Linnaeus University DH MA program have been introduced to Python scripts in Google Colab as a supplementary component to a first-semester course on digital methods. The course primarily relies on executables with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for assignments in text analysis, network analysis, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Alongside these tools, Python scripts performing similar tasks at a more basic level have been provided within each module. In addition, a similar mode of teaching has been used during the BALADRIA summer schools, with a mixed group of PhD and MA students from different fields and disciplines.

The inclusion of Python scripts is not intended to primarily develop students' practical coding skills, but to foster engagement that builds towards literacy in reading and interpreting code in a similar way to how other introductions to languages are carried out. This foundational literacy aligns with Moje’s 4Es of disciplinary literacy—engaging students in authentic disciplinary practices, eliciting and engineering prior knowledge and experiences, examining the underlying principles and methods, and evaluating their understanding to empower them as actors within the discipline (Moje, 2015). Integration with focus on reading and interpretation can also serve to concretize the decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithm steps suggested by computational thinking by showcasing how they result in working code (Wing, 2006).

By framing coding as disciplinary literacy, this presentation will argue for the deliberate integration of programming into DH education as a semiotic mode for engaging with content knowledge. The effects of such integration are discussed with a basis in student evaluations and instructors' teaching experiences.

Bibliography

Moje, E. B. (2015). Doing and teaching disciplinary literacy with adolescent learners: A social and cultural enterprise. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 254–278. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.2.254

Shanahan, C., & Shanahan, T. (2017). Disciplinary literacy. In Handbook of Writing Research (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis.

Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33–35. https://doi.org/10.1145/1118178.1118215