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English Language Arts/ General
From Language Arts to Learning Communities: A Pathway toward Critical Literacy for Everybody
This article will outline how literacy leaders can engage their community through empowering conversations and composition that center the body as knowledge and text.
Writing Matters: Following Multilingual Learners’ Lead to Expand Writing Assessment Practices
We explore writing and assessment of writing as a way to raise awareness of how to engage in the work of expanding literacies from a both and perspective one that acknowledges students’ translanguaging repertoires and identities.
The Body as Pedagogy: Exploring Literacies of the Body in Children’s Literature
Using literacies of the body and critical literacy lenses this article examines an author visit and possibilities for centering the body in text-based discussions with children.
Civic Literacies: Civic Engagement in the Early Years: Creating Opportunities for Children to Engage in Meaningful Social Action
As the final piece of our yearlong inquiry asking “What does it mean to prepare students for civic engagement?” Tiffany Livingston Palmatier shares how she scaffolds her kindergarten and first-grade students from talk to action.
Using Postmodern Picture Books as Mentor Texts for Critical Writing Pedagogy
Using the framework of critical writing pedagogy this study explores how five elementary students utilized craft moves from postmodern picture books in their own writing.
Research and Policy: Becoming Relentless Interrogators: A Critical Stance toward Children’s Literature
In this Research and Policy column the authors define what it means for teachers and students to take a critical stance when reading children’s literature. They offer a framework teachers can use to enact a critical stance when reading picture books with their students and provide suggestions for how teachers might teach students about the world using children’s literature as a tool.
Perspectives on Practice: Peritextual Features and Racialized Space in Children’s Literature
This article focuses on Ezra Jack Keats’s books and the ways these books enhance the literary experience through the richness of the peritextual features. Keats’s picture books have the potential to assist with comprehension building while providing a glimpse inside complex racialized spaces over a span of years.
The Power of Wondering What Could Be School
Early in the 2023–2024 school year Mr. Medeiros and a handful of his Kaua’i High School Future Teachers of Hawai’i club members took a two-day huaka’i (trip) to Oahu. This service-learning trip was part of the learning progression for the club which is focused on student advocacy and social justice. With the help of Josh Reppun retired Hawai’i State Supreme Court Justice Mike Wilson the people at What School Could Be and other amazing educators the students began their huaka’i by gathering together to think and talk about the purpose of education/school. Ostensibly they were traveling to Oahu to learn from others but really the adults were there to learn how to keep pushing the boundaries of the idea of “school.”
Perspectives on Practice: Fostering Empathy and Understanding: The Transformative Role of Diverse Children’s Literature in Confronting Racism
Across the country GOP legislators parent groups and school boards are banning books and attempting to take away the power of children’s literature. The resistance comes in the form of book bans and Critical Race Theory legislation. Taking away diverse books or banning the conversations that accompany such books from happening prevents books from being windows mirrors or sliding glass doors for students.
Transformational Civic Pedagogy: A Framework for Elementary Civic Learning
Drawing on ethnographic classroom data and a synthesis of research literature this article presents a transformational civic pedagogy framework for fostering student-centered equity-oriented civic learning.
History in the Margins: Using Critical Multicultural Analysis on Nonfiction Depictions of George Washington to Create Civic Discourse
Using critical multicultural analysis and a justice-oriented approach to teaching history this study analyzes the portrayal of George Washington in children’s biographies.
“Why do you think we look away?” Centering Humanity in Conversations about Economic Disparity
Using sociocultural approaches the authors document how one middle school teacher uses critical conversation to center humanity when discussing economic disparity.
Civic Literacies: Civic Engagement through Supporting Young Learners to Think More Critically
As the fifth piece of our year-long inquiry asks “What does it mean to prepare students for civic engagement?” Vivian Vasquez Carolyn Clarke and Barbara Comber speak to the importance of developing learning experiences that center our students’ experiences questions and tensions when helping them develop critical literacies.
Research: “The students are only getting more diverse”: Cultivating Culturally Infused Teaching and Learning with Preservice Teachers in a Professional Learning Community
Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have potential as a collaborative model at facilitating culturally relevant/sustainable (CRS) pedagogical practices with preservice teachers. This article presents the results of a study examining the experiences of preservice English educators in a model PLC aimed at fostering understandings of CRS pedagogies with preservice educators. Monthly virtual PLC sessions were conducted over the course of four months focused on developing an understanding of CRS pedagogies with six preservice educators. Transcripts from PLC sessions and individual interviews were examined through a qualitative case-study analysis to determine themes that emerged from participant experiences. Analysis revealed three themes as central to preservice teachers’ experiences in the model PLC: (1) need for sense of community in the PLC (2) apprehension regarding perceived administrative response and (3) enthusiasm for attempting CRS practices in the classroom. PLCs centered on developing CRS practices with preservice educators may aid English teacher education programs in preparing teachers to educate students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
Research: English Teachers’ Experience of Critical Language Teaching in an Anti-CRT Context
This study examines how English teachers in a politically conservative state integrate principles of Critical Language Awareness into their existing curricula despite a political climate hostile to teaching about social inequity. This project stemmed from concerns expressed by preservice teachers in an English methods class about their ability to enact the critical language teaching methods they were learning because of the political context in the state. Interviews with practicing teachers reveal how teachers incorporate critical language teaching across English courses as disparate as AVID English 9 Journalism and African American Literature. The study provides examples of external pushback against race-related curriculum and the resulting fear teachers carried in their professional and personal lives. It also documents teachers’ persistence in the face of fear. Finally the study raises challenges of teaching about race and language with white students in politically conservative contexts highlighting a need to support teachers doing critical language teaching in these spaces. The findings demonstrate that even under the scrutiny of anti-CRT sentiments teachers can successfully engage critical language awareness.
Invited Reflection: Small Talk about Big Ideas: The Benefits of ELATE Membership
In this piece three leaders of English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) reflect on their individual experiences with ELATE before collectively exploring the benefits of membership in the professional organization.
Perspectives on Practice: Counter-Storytelling with Front Desk: Critical Literature Circles in the Elementary Classroom
Grounded in counter-storytelling and AsianCrit this essay describes the authors’ experience hosting a teacher workshop on facilitating critical literature circles with elementary students.