bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Navigating Recessions in Foreign Aid: The Case of the Spanish Development Co-Operation Policy
Authors: María Larrú José
Published: February 2024

The chapter analyzes the Spanish experience in addressing the financial crisis of 2008–2014, which entailed a drastic reduction in official development assistance (ODA). It questions the coherence of cutting the external aid budget by over 70% while public debt increased by 153% and the public deficit by 13%. Despite the crisis caused by COVID-19 in 2020–2021, Spain has slightly increased its external aid budget. However, as of 2022, public debt levels remain above 110%, and the deficit stands at 4.7%. The chapter examines the modalities, instruments, agents, sectors, and countries targeted by Spanish ODA, identifying changes and regularities. The insights from the analysis of the Spanish case may be applicable to other countries facing reduced support in foreign aid and poverty alleviation policies in countries different from where taxes are collected.
Pengaruh Perbedaan Suhu Kalsinasi terhadap Band Gap dan Konduktivitas Listrik Lapisan Tipis CuSnO3
Authors: Syafrian Syafrian , Sanjaya Hary
Published: February 2024

The main semiconductor materials used are the elements Ge (germanium) and Si (silicon). The element Ge is found in nature in small quantities and silicon is the most abundant element in the earth's crust but its conductivity is low. The semiconductor material that has recently been frequently researched is Copper Tin Oxide (CuSnO3). CuSnO3 has high electrical conductivity and is quite abundant on the earth's surface. The synthesized CuSnO3 semiconductor is applied as a thin layer because of several advantages such as large output voltage, small electrode mass, and also a fairly long service life. This research aims to determine the optical and electrical properties of CuSnO3 thin films synthesized using the sol-gel method with dip coating techniques. CuCl2·2H2O, SnCl2·2H2O, methanol, and monoethanolamine (MEA) are the precursors used. The synthesized CuSnO3 thin layer was characterized using a UV-DRS instrument to determine the band gap value and tested using the four point probe method to determine its electrical conductivity. The band gap values with calcination temperatures of 500°C, 550°C, and 600°C are 2.55 eV, 2.83 eV, and 2.95 eV, respectively, with electrical conductivity of 348.46 102 S/cm, 155.48 102 S/cm, and 107.63 102 S/cm. From these data it can be concluded that the band gap value of the CuSnO3 thin layer will increase when the calcination temperature used is higher, and the conductivity decreases as the band gap value of the CuSnO3 thin film increases.
Fumarate Hydratase–Deficient Renal Cell Carcinoma With Predominant Tubulocystic Features Mimics Tubulocystic Renal Cell Carcinoma
Authors: Yang Xiaoqun , Liu Yang , Wang Huafeng , Xu Yunze , Zhang Huizhi , Zhao Ming , Luo Xiaoqing , Jin Hongtao , Xiong Ji , Tao Lili , Xu Jiankun , Zhou Luting , Li Xiangyun , Xu Haimin , Dong Lei , Wang Chaofu
Published: February 2024

Context.—

Fumarate hydratase (FH)–deficient renal cell carcinoma (RCC) rarely exhibits a predominant tubulocystic architecture with few other components. RCC with pure tubules and cysts lined by eosinophilic tumor cells with prominent nucleoli would raise the diagnosis of tubulocystic RCC. It is important to differentiate the 2 entities because they lead to different outcomes.

Objective.—

To address this concern, a multicenter study was implemented to explore useful clinicopathologic features in differentiation between tubulocystic FH-deficient RCC and tubulocystic RCC.

Design.—

Clinical factors included age, sex, tumor size, and outcome. Morphologic factors included cell morphology, presence or absence of a nontubulocystic component, and stromal findings. Immunohistochemistry, fluorescence in situ hybridization, and next-generation sequencing were performed to explore the protein expression and molecular profiles of the 2 entities.

Results.—

We evaluated 6 patients with tubulocystic RCC and 10 patients with tubulocystic FH-deficient RCC. Tubulocystic RCC exhibited a small size (<4.0 cm, pT1a), low Ki-67 index (<5%), retained FH, and negative 2SC expression. Tubulocystic FH-deficient RCC had a relatively large size and a high Ki-67 index. Perinucleolar haloes, loss of FH, and 2SC positivity were always observed. Pure tubulocystic architecture was not observed in FH-deficient RCC, because focal nontubulocystic components can always be seen.

Conclusions.—

We emphasized multiple sectioning to identify a nontubulocystic architecture to exclude tubulocystic RCC. Moreover, tumor size, FH/2SC staining, and the Ki-67 index can differentiate tubulocystic FH-deficient RCC from tubulocystic RCC. The diagnosis of tubulocystic RCC was not recommended in renal mass biopsy because of the limited tissues sampled.
The Role of Leadership Style and Teachers’ Performance at Primary Level: An Exploratory Study
Authors: Shabana Akhtar  , Naeem Akhtar
Published: February 2024

As believed by communication abilities are one of the 21st Century Leadership Skills of school administrators that have a major influence on teachers' capacity to do their tasks. Due to the higher significance that communication has in improving instructors' performance, communicative leaders also have a positive influence on teachers’ performance. Education is essential to a child's development in elementary school. Consequently, it is necessary to have a leadership style that can understand the factors influencing elementary school teachers' performance. Strong leadership, enhances resource management, long-term performance, and management efficiency and effectiveness. This study aimed to investigate the many leadership styles employed in primary schools as well as abilities in situational leadership styles to improve teacher-leader interactions, improve teacher performance, and ultimately better the learning process in private primary schools in Karachi. This research was done in Karachi and interviewed 10 teachers using qualitative data collection methods. The purpose of this study was to ascertain how leaders' leadership philosophies and instructors' job performance interacted. In educational institutions, a suitable leadership style encourages good performance. The study's conclusions showed that all teachers thought a leader's leadership style could greatly improve teachers' performance at private schools in Karachi. Most educators said that having encouraging and capable leaders had aided their performance, professional growth, and student development. One of the crucial components for improving teachers' performance is encouraging others to complete assigned tasks happily, effectively, and successfully. The results of the research indicated that transformational and transactional leaders have a beneficial impact on teachers' performance, whereas authoritative leaders have a negative effect.
This Giant Classroom That Is America
Authors: Collopy Trisha
Published: February 2024

A conversation with US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera
British Invasion: James Britton, Composition Studies, and Anti-Disciplinarity
Authors: Durst Russel K.
Published: February 2024

This essay examines James Britton’s role in the development of composition studies as an academic discipline and considers the relevance of his work in the field today. It contends that his influence arose, paradoxically, through his construction of an antidisciplinary theory of the role of language in teaching and learning. Finally, in response to calls for composition studies to move away from its longstanding focus on instruction, it argues instead for an increased emphasis on pedagogical inquiry.
Difficulty Paper (Dis)Connections: Understanding the Threads Students Weave between Their Reading and Writing
Authors: Sweeney Meghan A. , McBride Maureen
Published: February 2024

Using Mariolina Salvatori’s difficulty paper assignment to explore student experiences when reading, this paper examines basic writing students’
Tracing Transfer across Media: Investigating Writers’ Perceptions of Cross-Contextual and Rhetorical Reshaping in Processes of Remediation
Authors: Depalma Michael-John
Published: February 2024

This qualitative study examines how writers perceive the mobilization and adaptation of their print-based writing knowledge and multiple literacies when remediating written essays into digital stories. It also outlines a pedagogical tool that can help writers reflect on what they might transfer as they compose across media.
Project(ing) Literacy: Writing to Assemble in a Postcomposition FYW Classroom
Authors: Preston Jacqueline
Published: February 2024

In this article, I turn to a grounded theory study that examines the experiences of students participating in an individual project-based FYW course, exploring up close the exploits,—practices, and products of one student “writing to assemble.” I question pedagogy stayed to theory that would treat writing as primarily a technology of representation, and in its place—introduce the concept of “writing as assemblage.” Positing a theory of the writing space that underscores writing’s more generative qualities, I call for a new definition of proficiency—for all manner of first-year writing courses.
Prototypical Reading: Volume, Desire, Anxiety
Authors: Robilard Amy E.
Published: February 2024

Motivated by a fear that she may have plagiarized, the author considers the possibility that plagiarism might be understood as a transgression against reading as well as against writing. Drawing on Philip Eubanks’s work in Metaphor and Writing, the article proposes that one reason for composition studies’ ambivalent relationship to reading is that we possess a reading prototype that equates all reading with literature. A significant effect of the prototype is a conceptualization of reading in terms of volume, which understandably transmutes reading desire into reading anxiety. This article suggests that paying attention to the ways in which we find the things we read can help to assuage this anxiety.
PInterrogating Disciplines/Disciplinarity in WAC/WID: An Institutional Study
Authors: Gere Anne Ruggles , Swofford Sarah C. , Silver Naomi , Pugh Melody
Published: February 2024

Examination of the perspectives and experiences of faculty, graduate student instructors, and undergraduates participating in a WAC/WID program shows how discipline-focused WAC/WID principles are often resisted, interrogated, and subverted by all three groups of stakeholders. New disciplinarity, especially its concepts of borderlands and elasticity, offers a promising focus for WAC/WID.
Around 1986: The Externalization of Cognition and the Emergence of Postprocess Invention
Authors: Lotier Kristopher M.
Published: February 2024

Around 1986, inventional researchers began to presuppose an externalist philosophy of mind, thereby ushering in the postprocess era. Ecological composition and posthumanism,now understood as postprocess inventional models, present direct pedagogical applications, allowing different objects (e.g., databases, search engines) to qualify as writing and favoring rhetorical impact over “originality.”
Composing Post-Multiculturalism
Authors: Barlow Daniel
Published: February 2024

Drawing from cultural studies and social justice education, this essay argues for the productive potential of racial inquiry in composition scholarship and pedagogy. Ethical imperatives facing rhetoric and composition are also pedagogical opportunities:to rethink multiculturalism, politicize student affect, and develop student-centered writing processes predicated upon deliberative critical inquiry.
Material Translingual Ecologies
Authors: Jordan Jay
Published: February 2024

Translingual approaches to composition promise to nudge the field fully away from outdated concepts of linguistic diversity, replacing judgments of correctness and assumptions—about discrete languages with analyses of local, situational negotiations and pragmatic competence. Yet in fully displacing the monolingual “native speaker” with the translingual—composer, the approach replaces one linguistic hero with another—a fully competent “user” who shuttles between languages. This article seeks to extend translingualism’s—analysis of (metaphorical) language ecologies into the material surroundings of language contact situations. Drawing on scholarship on affect, vital materialism, and material—rhetorics, it suggests an empirical reorientation that diffuses attention beyond human language-using rhetors in order to account for shared rhetorical agency.
Clarifying the Relationship between L2 Writing and Translingual Writing: An Open Letter to Writing Studies Editors and Organization Leaders
Authors: Atkinson Dwight , Crusan Deborah , Matsuda Paul Kei , Ortmeier-Hooper Christina , Ruecker Todd , Simpson Steve , Tardy Christine
Published: February 2024

A concerned group of L2 professionals write an open letter to express their concern that the terms “L2 writing” and “translingual writing” have become almost interchangeable in—writing studies publications and conferences and further argue that much will be lost if “translingual writing” replaces “L2 writing.” Each are distinct areas of research and—pedagogy: L2 writing is a more technical description applied to writing in a language acquired later in life, while translingual writing describes an orientation to language—difference. Without attention to the distinct contributions made by each field, L2 scholarship becomes marginalized in publications, conferences, and hiring practices. The letter—authors and endorsers encourage writing studies editors and organization leaders to recognize and understand the difference between the fields so as to ensure a strong and—enduring future for L2 scholarship.—
Emerging Voices: Upvoting the Exordium: Literacy Practices of the Digital Interface
Authors: Tarsa Rebecca
Published: February 2024

This article uses data from a study of college students’ digital reading and writing to examine the influence of interface on literacy activity within participatory online spaces. While most existing work treats activity within these spaces largely as a function of individual interest in a space’s content, students’ firsthand accounts suggest that interface features and design play a significant role as well, particularly as students transition from one form of engagement or activity to another. Using Teena Carnegie’s framing of the interface as digital exordium, the author argues that, since participatory interfaces and the composition classroom share several central goals, students’ experiences with interface offer important lessons for translating that engagement to an academic setting.
Transmodality in/and Processes of Making: Changing Dispositions and Practice
Authors: Shipka Jody
Published: February 2024

This essay argues for approaches to composing that underscore the translingual and multimodal (or transmodal) character of texts and communicative practices. It maintains that learning about and working with different language varieties, cultural conventions, modes, and communicative technologies (digital as well as analog) helps to highlight processes of making, engaging, remixing, and transforming which, in turn, provide markedly different, and greatly enriched, points of entry for experiencing and appreciating the dynamic, highly distributed, translingual, multimodal, and embodied aspects of all communicative practice.
Emerging Voices: Shared Frequency: Expressivism, Social Constructionism, and the Linked Creative Writing-Composition Class
Authors: Sumpter Matt
Published: February 2024

This article examines how creative writing pedagogy and composition pedagogy can be put into productive conversation by using expressivism and social constructionism as a shared frequency, allowing for a deepening of the pedagogical options available to teachers. The end result of this analysis is a proposal for a dual course pairing of composition and creative writing. Within this proposed arrangement, creative writing, on the one hand, would emphasize expressivist pedagogies that grant students centrality in the classroom while still exploring the ideological implications of the writing act. Composition, on the other hand, would focus on scholarship, research, and theory, while still employing creative writing activities that keep student writers from feeling utterly marginalized.
Review: Beyond the Tipping Point: Creative Writing Comes of Age
Authors: Vanderslice Stephanie
Published: February 2024

The publication of the three works reviewed here relating to creative writing theory and pedagogy mark a point of critical mass for the field of creative writing studies that has been building for decades. This review looks at those books and discusses how they help point the way forward for the discipline.
Expanding the Dialogue on Writing Assessment at HBCUs: Foundational Assessment Concepts and Legacies of Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Authors: Green David F.
Published: February 2024

Race and class are deeply embedded in the way the field and teachers think about linguistic and written performance. Yet, addressing and understanding racial and linguistic prejudice remains important to the fairness of one’s pedagogies, assessment practices, and curricular development. The author argues that social justice approaches to assessment require instructors and program administrators to rethink assessment concepts such as reliability and validity with an eye toward the ways disadvantage is embedded in the very construct task responses and assessment materials used to define quality writing. Because historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) present a unique blend of culturally relevant teaching and traditional (i.e., White) definitions of quality writing, they provide a unique site for inquiry into questions of writing assessment and social justice. Specifically, in engaging with the push-pull legacy toward language use and race that is found at HBCUs, the author indicates ways we might enable teachers, administrators, and students to resist monolingual, racialized consequences embedded in their views of writing assessment and rethink the foundational measurement concepts of reliability, validity, and fairness.
Extending the Conversation: “Inducing Colored Sisters of Other Places to Imitate Their Example”: Connecting Historic Literary Societies to a Contemporary Writing Group
Authors: Muhammad Gholnecsar E.
Published: February 2024

In this thought-provoking piece, Muhammad articulates the development of a literacy collaborative for African American adolescent girls, with an eye toward replicating practices adopted by the Female Literary Association of Philadelphia and other similar societies established in the mid-1800s. Muhammad outlines the features of the literacy collaborative and presents the benefits it evoked for participants, including the reading of mentor texts, freedom to write openly without censorship, and uninterrupted writing time.
“I’m Fighting My Fight, and I’m Not Alone Anymore”: The Influence of Communities of Inquiry
Authors: Simon Rob
Published: February 2024

This case study explores an urban secondary literacy teacher’s involvement in communities of inquiry over time. I draw on data from a multiyear study that documented the intellectual work of a community of teacher candidates I worked with as an instructor in a literacy methods course and cofounder of an inquiry community they participated in during their first two years in the classroom. Using document analysis and interviews with the focal teacher, Laura, conducted five years after the initial study, I explore how participation in critical inquiry-based teacher education and teacher research communities in her early years in the classroom led Laura to initiate change-oriented collaborations in her ongoing professional practice. I conclude with a discussion of how inquiry can support preservice and inservice teachers—particularly those working in embattled and underfunded urban schools in a time of heightened accountability—to develop activist orientations toward educational policy, critical solidarity with peers, and relational approaches to educating diverse students.
Instruction Matters: Secondary English Preservice Teachers’ Implementation of Cognitively Demanding Writing Tasks
Authors: Benko Susanna L.
Published: February 2024

Research on writing tasks suggests that cognitively demanding tasks are important for student learning. Though a great deal is known about high-quality writing instruction, less is known about how teachers, through their instruction, support students to complete tasks at a high level. This qualitative study examines three preservice teachers’ writing instruction to understand how their instruction does—and sometimes does not—support the demands of the tasks that they provided for their students. The findings suggest that preservice teachers’ instruction appears to align with expectations for good writing instruction (e.g., using models), but that they often struggle to enact these practices in a way that supports the complexity of the tasks.
“Perhaps These Are Not Poetic Times at All”: Using Poetry to Cope with and Critique a High-Stakes Teacher Performance Assessment
Authors: Chandler-Olcott Kelly , Fleming Sarah M. , Nieroda Janine L.
Published: February 2024

This study takes a fine-grained look at the inaugural implementation of a high-stakes teacher performance assessment (the edTPA) from multiple perspectives and chronicles how participants used the reading, writing, and discussion of poetry to cope with and sometimes critique the edTPA. Teacher researchers sought to understand multiple perspectives of stakeholders associated with the English education program in which each played a role. Other participants included seven English education teacher candidates and five mentor teachers from candidates’ student teaching placements. Data included lesson plans, instructional materials, and student work from the seminar candidates took during student teaching, email messages among stakeholders, official edTPA communications, field notes, and stakeholder interviews. Findings are organized around the functions of poetry for managing the edTPA revealed by the analysis. The study suggests that reading, writing, and discussing poetry can assist candidates and teacher educators in navigating a high-stakes assessment through reflective practice.
Black Girls and Critical Media Literacy for Social Activism
Authors: McArthur Sherell A.
Published: February 2024

Despite the largely degrading media representations of Blackness, historically, Black girls and women have been strong activists, disrupting narratives the media conveys about Black girl- and womanhood. Centering Black girls’ lived experience through critical media literacy can give them the opportunity to develop the language to identify, deconstruct, and problematize the complexity of power operating in media and negotiate visibility by counternarrating racist, sexist, and classist media narratives with authentic stories of Black girlhood. This article centralizes Black girls in media literacy by articulating the aims of the individual and collective endeavors of the Black Girls’ Literacies Collective (BGLC). The author unpacks critical media literacy for classroom teachers and shares practical ways to employ media literacy for youth social activism to alter the educational landscape to effect change.
Provocateur Pieces: At the Kitchen Table: Black Women English Educators Speaking Our Truths
Authors: Haddix Marcelle , McArthur Sherell A. , Muhammad Gholnecsar E. , Price-Dennis Detra , Sealey-Ruiz Yolanda
Published: February 2024

In this Provocateur Piece, the authors featured in the themed issue re-create a virtual kitchen table talk where they dialogue across their respective work as English teacher educators and scholars who foreground Black feminist/womanist epistemologies in their personal, social, and professional lives. They discuss what it means to be Black women, mothers, sisters, and daughters who do work with Black girls in K–12 educational settings and Black women in teacher education. Why is it critical that all educators acknowledge Black girls’ literacies in their work? How are Black girls’ literacies honored in our work? What does it mean for us as Black women educators to do this work? How does it enrich our lives? What are the challenges? The piece ends with an open letter to Black girls as an affirming call for their reclaiming and redefining of their literate selves.
Illuminating Discourses of Youth through the Study of First-Person Narration in Young Adult Literature
Authors: Thein Amanda Haertling , Sulzer Mark A.
Published: February 2024

Grounded in the three-part literary concept of the narrator, the narratee, and the implied reader, this article provides teachers and students with a heuristic for—uncovering, attending to, and critiquing assumptions about youth found in the first-person narrative form that predominates in young adult literature.
Connecting Students with Shakespeare’s Poetry: Digital Creations of Close Reading
Authors: Lange Joan , Connolly Patrick , Lintzenich Devin
Published: February 2024

How can students build new connections with the poetic elements of Shakespeare’s plays? In this digital movie project, students explore close reading and thoughtful selection of imagery to create deeper understanding.
Pairing Poetry and Technology: Teaching from the “Outside Inward”
Authors: Emert Toby
Published: February 2024

In this article, an instructional coach and a classroom teacher describe a two-week instructional unit that integrates poetry and digital storytelling tools.
Galvanizing Empathy through Poetry
Authors: Xerri Daniel , Agius Stephanie Xerri
Published: February 2024

In this article, the authors consider how to use poetry to develop empathy for asylum seekers among students in Malta, where asylum seeking is a present and divisive issue.
Second City Teacher Training: Applying Improvisational Theater Techniques to the Classroom
Authors: Talhelm Melissa
Published: February 2024

While the commonly explored teacher-as-performer metaphor emphasizes the role of the teacher, the teacher-as-improvisational-performer foregrounds the collaborative nature of learning and validates the role of students.
The Multidimensionality of Children’s Picture Books for Upper Grades
Authors: Massey Susan R.
Published: February 2024

Picture books are often seen as a valuable tool for younger readers. In this article, the author suggests that the multiple literacies required to read a picture book can provide scaffolding and transmission of additional concepts for older readers.
High School Matters: Whose Literacy Is It, Anyway?
Authors: Butti Lawrence
Published: February 2024

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators.
A Dialogue about Dialogicality: Getting a Hold on Dialogue in the Classroom
Authors: Hopkins Jed , Yost Aaron
Published: February 2024

This article explores dialogical forms of pedagogy, in the form of a dialogue between two secondary English teachers.
High School Matters: Professional Relationships: Collaboration Is Key
Authors: Butti Lawrence
Published: February 2024

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators.
Knowing When to Shut Up: Suggestions for Creating a Collaborative Learning Environment
Authors: Arons Marsha
Published: February 2024

This article demonstrates a step-by-step teaching method using a poem, a play, and a short essay to help students support each other and take responsibility for learning.
Carpe Librum: Seize the (YA) Book: Voice in Verse: Four Outstanding Mentor Texts
Authors: Schmidt Pauline Skowron
Published: February 2024

This column serves as a space dedicated to conversation about Young Adult Literature and to celebrate adolescents, their reading, and their experiences by reviewing the texts that engage them.
Continuous Becoming: Moving toward Mastery: The First-Year Marathon
Authors: Coombs Dawan
Published: February 2024

“Continuous Becoming: Moving toward Mastery” offers suggestions, ideas, and experiences to help novice and veteran teachers discover their own roadmaps toward mastery.
Teaching Good Kids in a m.A.A.d World: Using Hip-Hop to Reflect, Reframe, and Respond to Complex Realities
Authors: Dover Alison G. , Pozdol Tony
Published: February 2024

In this article, the authors examine how one of the authors used Kendrick Lamar’s autobiographical hip-hop to provoke mandate-compliant analyses of complex social, racial, and political realities.
Emotional Truth with Fictional Images: Reading and Writing Nonfiction Comics in the Secondary Classroom
Authors: Kersulov Michael L.
Published: February 2024

The article describes how one student in a summer enrichment English class used fictional elements and images in comic form to represent her identity and the emotional truth of difficult experiences.
Disabling Assumptions: Inauthentic Deaf Characters in Traditional Literature
Authors: Fields Dynnelle , Kim Kelly , Spencer Casey
Published: February 2024

This column explores how paying attention to disability—both to the rich contributions made by people with disabilities and to the sometimes negative attitudes in society that can interfere with those contributions—can foster classroom interactions that are more democratic, more inclusive, and more equitable.
The Socratic Seminar in the Age of the Common Core: A Search for Text-Dependent Discourse
Authors: Walsh-Moorman Beth
Published: February 2024

Linking discourse to close and careful reading, this study explores how moving a face-to-face seminar into an online environment may change students’ ability to answer in ways that demonstrate text dependency.
Soft(a)ware in the English Classroom: Saving Computer Science Education from Itself
Authors: Lynch Tom Liam
Published: February 2024

“Soft(a)ware in the English Classroom” seeks to identify the ways in which our teaching and learning lives are influenced by software.
Carpe Librum: Seize the (YA) Book: Transitioning Teens: Why We Can’t Forget the T in the LGBTQ Spectrum
Authors: Nagle J. Eanan
Published: February 2024

This column serves as a space dedicated to conversation about Young Adult Literature and to celebrate adolescents, their reading, and their experiences by reviewing the texts that engage them.
Cloud-Based Tools for Teaching Writing as a Process
Authors: Collet Vicki S.
Published: February 2024

The author provides readers with resources to enrich writing instruction but also underscores the importance of being intentional about the choices we make for our students.
Conversation Currents: Considering Informational Texts
Authors: Tribunella Eric
Published: February 2024

Two researchers of children’s and young adult literature and coauthors of Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction (2013) discuss the complexities that surround informational texts and the issues related to these complexities.
Performance-Based Assessment for Certification: Insights from edTPA Implementation
Authors: Lachuk Amy Johnson , Koellner Karen
Published: February 2024

In this essay, two teacher educators share the tensions they experienced in implementing program-wide interventions in response to the edTPA adoption. In particular, we share how we experienced tensions between 1) telling teacher candidates how to teach and supporting their growth through self-directed reflection, 2) carrying ourselves with confidence in the face of uncertainty about the newly state-mandated edTPA examination, 3) valuing teacher candidates' prior experiences with teaching and learning, and helping them reconstruct their experiences in a way that would support them with the edTPA examination. We share the insights we gained about edTPA implementation from experiencing these tensions
Feedback Loops: Assembling Student Editors, Stories, and Devices for Multimodal Peer Feedback
Authors: Lenters Kimberly , Grant Kimberley
Published: February 2024

This article explores the transformational learning opportunities and challenges that arose when multimodal recording devices were introduced for providing peer feedback in a fifth-grade classroom's writers’ workshop. This study takes up the challenge of addressing ways in which using iPods and iPads might open new possibilities for writing and editing rather than just overlaying established practices with digital technology. Using a socio-material lens to examine multimodal literacy, the study examines the practices of 15 students as they interacted in peer-editing assemblages their teacher labeled “feedback loops.” Observations and interviews with two pairs of students are highlighted to explore how students used and adapted feedback loops to enhance their current and emergent literacy learning.
Becoming Writers in a Readers’ World: Kindergarten Writing Journeys
Authors: Ackerman Sara
Published: February 2024

While research demonstrates the importance of writing in early literacy, school standards and practices do not necessarily operate with this understanding. This action research, conducted in a kindergarten class in an international school in Ethiopia, investigates how students develop identities as writers, the relationship between their writing and reading development, and the implications of this for teaching. Data was collected in the form of personal interviews, writing samples, reading assessments, and anecdotal observations. The results show that in contexts that support and value writing, kindergartners see themselves as writers before they write conventionally and before they begin to read. This study demonstrates the importance of writing to kindergartners and underscores its crucial role in the context of literacy development.
Research & Policy: Calling for Response-ability in Our Classrooms
Authors: Boyd Maureen P.
Published: February 2024

How teacher talk frames, prompts, and responds to student contributions—in the moment and across time—directly impacts the scope and manner of student learning. Response-able teacher talk practices cultivate student exploration and articulation as they frame and connect material to local experiences and student funds of knowledge, guide critical exploration, and cultivate openness to perspectives. Response-able teacher practices are a concrete manifestation of a dialogic instructional stance. This article identifies three recognizable features of response-able talk and provides examples of what they look like in our elementary classrooms.
Invited Dialogue: Tales and Testimonies: Viewpoints on Diverse Literature from Duncan Tonatiuh and Violet J. Harris
Authors: Turner Jennifer D.
Published: February 2024

This article features a discussion with Mr. Duncan Tonatiuh and Dr. Violet J. Harris about the importance of diverse literature for children in the United States.
Searching for Full Vision: Writing Representations of African American Adolescent Girls
Authors: Muhammad AGholnecsar E.
Published: February 2024

Currently, African American girls are being depicted as overly sexual, violent, or confrontational, are judged by physical features, or are invisible across mainstream media and within school classrooms. Few investigations have explored how they respond to and interpret such imposed representations. Nor, for the most part, have studies examined how girls represent themselves among a society of others pathologizing and defining who they are. This inquiry investigated self-representations in the writings of eight African American adolescent girls ages 12–17 who participated in a historically grounded literacy collaborative. Coupling sociohistorical and critical sociocultural theories, I organized and analyzed their writings through open, axial, and selective coding. Findings show that the girls wrote across platforms similar to those African American women have addressed historically, which included writing to represent self, writing to resist or counter ascribed representations, and writing toward social change. The girls wrote multiple and complex representations, which included ethnic, gender, intellectual, kinship,—sexual, individual, and community representations. These findings suggest their writings served as hybrid spaces for the girls to explore, make sense of, resist, and express different manifestations of self. The representations the girls created in their writings did not fall into static notions of culture or identity. Instead, their self-representations were socially constructed and were responsive to their lives. This study extends the extant research by offering wider views of representations from the girls’ voices, as well as a broadened historical lens to view their reading and writing with implications for how English language arts educators can reconceptualize the roles of writing in classrooms.
Beyond the Language Barrier: Opening Spaces for ELL/Non-ELL Interaction
Authors: Deanna Brooks Case Maneka
Published: February 2024

Cultivating interaction among English Language Learners (ELLs) and their non-ELL peers remains a desirable, yet often elusive, goal. While existing literature documents the challenges of ELL/non-ELL interaction and proposes strategies for overcoming them, there is little research examining concrete episodes of interaction from both the ELL and non-ELL perspectives. In response, I explore how a group of refugee and immigrant high school students (ELLs and non-ELLs) negotiated their interaction while collaboratively creating a digital video. In particular, I consider the role of the “language barrier” and how the participants interacted through and despite language. In the tradition of humanities-oriented educational research, I draw on Levinasian philosophy to reflect on the relational and ethical aspects of ELL/non-ELL interaction. Findings suggest that while language played a key role, communication obstacles tended to defy simple and strategic anticipation and resolution. Negotiation of meaning was often a creative, situated, and multidirectional process. Most importantly, interaction seemed to be ultimately about people in relationshipâ€”uncertain and at times uncomfortable, but also full of promise and opportunities for ethical response. I propose opening spaces as a new approach to ELL/non-ELL interaction that foregrounds human and ethical dimensions. Such reframing dislodges the issue from common assumptions which may unwittingly reduce ELLs to a “language problem,” and it honors the potential of participants creatively working out the interaction for themselves. By pursuing insights from both ELLs and non-ELLs, this study offers an important perspective rarely explored in the literature.
“We Always Talk About Race”: Navigating Race Talk Dilemmas in the Teaching of Literature
Authors: Thomas Ebony Elizabeth
Published: February 2024

There is considerable confusion in contemporary society when it comes to talking about race.Because of this confusion, race talk in schools can be fraught with difficulty, leading to problematic conversations, disconnections, and ultimately student disengagement. While studies in psychology, sociology, and linguistics have considered the role of race in discourse, there have been fewer of these investigations in English education, especially research on the teaching of literature. This article looks closely at the classroom talk of two veteran English teachers’ one an African American man, the other a White woman’ in a racially diverse high school, showing how teachers employ different strategies to navigate similarly fraught conversations. Taking an interactional ethnographic approach, I demonstrate ways that conversations about race that emerged from literature units in both classrooms opened up opportunities for some students to participate, while constraining and excluding others. The results of the study revealed that the two teachers navigated these dilemmas through tactical and strategic temporary alignments of actions and discourse, but in both classes, silence and evasion characterized moments of racial tension. As a growing number of researchers and teacher educators provide workshops and materials for teachers interested in classroom discourse studies, supporting new and experienced teachers’ investigations in this area may ultimately prove fruitful not only for teaching and learning, but also for race relations.
The Intersection of Reading and Identity in High School Literacy Intervention Classes
Authors: Frankel Katherine K.
Published: February 2024

It is common practice to enroll adolescents in classes designed to improve their reading. Previous studies of literacy intervention classes have focused on students’ acquisition of reading skills and strategies, but few studies have considered how reading identities may contribute to literacy learning. To address this gap, I used theories of positioning and identity to answer the question: How did students’ understandings of literacy and their own reading identities interact with the figured worlds of their literacy intervention classrooms? I analyzed interviews, field notes, and artifacts for two students and teachers in different classrooms, focusing on students’ acts of agency. Analyses revealed that both students’ identities as good readers conflicted with the figured worlds of their classrooms, but they responded differently. One challenged the norms of his classroom in a manner contrary to his teacher’s expectations and was unable to disrupt his positioning as a struggling reader. The other acquiesced to the norms of her classroom in ways her teacher recognized as characteristic of a capable reader, ultimately upsetting her struggling reader subject position. The findings reveal that students’ acts of agency and teachers’ interpretations of those acts are informed by students’ perceptions of themselves as readers and teachers’ understandings of literacy and learning in intervention classrooms. The findings problematize the practice of placing students in classes that position them as deficient. Additional research that attends to sociocultural factors in classrooms is necessary to understand the academic, social, and personal implications of particular approaches to literacy instruction and intervention for individual students.
Forum: A Governmentality Perspective on the Common Core
Authors: Brass Jory
Published: February 2024

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have anchored an education policy apparatus that seeks to reconstruct much of the work of curriculum, teaching, and teacher education. However, teachers and teacher education faculty have often struggled to recognize the specific ideas and practices that education policies mobilize to steer their actions, institutions, and professions toward particular values and outcomes. This Forum essay adopts a governmentality perspective on the CCSS to draw attention to its political rationalities and the work that standards do to govern educators at a distance and to influence how they govern their own conduct. This is not a critique of the Common Core, but a brief reading of CCSS publications in their own terms to highlight their neoliberal governmentality and the ways they have positioned the Standards to steer curriculum, teaching, and teacher education through high-stakes testing, outcomes-based performance management, and the privatization, automation, and outsourcing of core educational processes.
Feature: Promoting Teacher Presence: Strategies for Effective and Efficient Feedback to Student Writing Online
Authors: Black Jennifer , Cox Stephanie , Heney Jil , Keith Melissa
Published: February 2024

This essay uses the Community of Inquiry model to discuss strategies online writing instructors can use to provide effective feedback to students while intentionally creating a
Feature: “I Bought the Book and I Didn’t Need It”: What Reading Looks like at an Urban Community College
Authors: Principe Annie Del , Ihara Rachel
Published: February 2024

Based on a qualitative study of students’ experiences, we offer a new typology of student reading behaviors across the disciplines at a community college.
Instructional Note: Online Peer Review across Sections
Authors: Vasileiou Lykourgos
Published: February 2024

Conducting online peer review with students from other sections allows for a more writing-focused process.
“I don’t know how to get there”: Tensions of Transforming Critical Literacy Challenges into Action
Authors: Darolia Laura H.
Published: February 2024

Laura Darolia writes about feeling like “the captain of a sinking ship” as she tried to implement a critical pedagogy in a classroom space limited by outside mandates on instructional time.
Literacy and Vulnerability: Shame or Growth for Readers Who Struggle
Authors: Jaeger Elizabeth L.
Published: February 2024

Elizabeth Jaeger draws attention to the vulnerability of learners through the assignment of labels like “struggling reader” and pushes back in her discussion of readers who are vulnerable.
Making Sense with Informational Texts: The Interactive Read-Aloud as Responsive Teaching
Authors: May Laura , Bingham Gary
Published: February 2024

Authors May and Bingham advocate for interactive read-alouds of informational texts as an avenue for supporting literacy development while building on the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse children.
When Interpretations of Assessment Data Collide
Authors: Fahrenbruck Mary
Published: February 2024

Mary Fahrenbruck provides a detailed case study on the assessment of reading skills for Lily, a third grader.
Would You Mortgage Your DNA? Prompting Meaningful Reading and Writing in Science with Genome
Authors: G. Brozo William
Published: February 2024

As the influence of the Common Core State Standards expands, there has been a growing recognition of the central role of literacy and language in the learning of science. Developing proficiency in the language of science for middle-grades’ learners will present ever-increasing challenges for teachers of science and their literacy colleagues. The read-aloud approach used by Jared, the science teacher, and supported by the author, a literacy professional, exemplifies an effective instructional practice with one graphic novel. The teacher took full advantage of the graphic novel to gain and sustain students’ attention, build knowledge, and support disciplinary literacy.
Improving Argumentative Writing through Mathematics and Collaboration
Authors: Falter Thomas Angela , Bostic jonathan
Published: February 2024

Every middle school teacher has heard an argument from students as they try to persuade, manipulate, or change the minds of others who do not agree with them. These arguments are often heated and in most cases they are “I win; you lose!” situations. Seldom based on evidence, they typically involve opinions and emotions. This, however, is not argumentation, which is mandated by the Common Core State Standards. Making logical arguments based on substantive claims, sound reasoning, and relevant evidence is a cornerstone of the new writing standards. We discuss a collaborative project that supported students’ argumentative writing in this manuscript.
Relationships Matter: Fostering Motivation through Interactions
Authors: Daniels Erika , Pirayoff Ron
Published: February 2024

The word motivation comes from the Latin word meaning “to move.” Middle school educators know all too well that getting their young adolescents to want to move or work or achieve can be challenging. Similarly, teachers themselves fall on various points of the motivation continuum. In this article, the authors report what motivated teachers said about the factors that encourage them to become and remain effective. A striking finding was that each of the teachers found relationships—with students, colleagues, and administrators—at the heart of his or her motivation. A steadfast commitment to building relationships has a powerful impact on sustained motivation over a career.—