bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Expanding Working-Class Rhetorical Traditions: The Moonlight Schools and Alternative Solidarities among Appalachian Women, 1911 to 1920
Authors: Greer Jane
Published: February 2024

This essay urges scholars and teachers interested in the rhetorical agency of economically disenfranchised groups to expand their field of vision beyond the organized labor movement. The author discusses the Moonlight Schools, founded in Kentucky in 1911 by Cora Wilson Stewart, as a site for investigating alternative forms of solidarity. More particularly, she argues that Appalachian women used the literacy skills they developed under Stewart’s tutelage to support their own long-standing practices of neighborliness. By thus looking beyond strikes, walkouts, and other dramatic rhetorical moments from the labor movement, this essay hopes to begin building a more nuanced understanding of how people with limited economic resources gain purchase in the world through words.
Pidgin as Rhetorical Sovereignty: Articulating Indigenous and Minority Rhetorical Practices with the Language Politics of Place
Authors: Nordstrom Georganne
Published: February 2024

Pidgin, the Creole identified with “Local” culture in Hawaii, is seldom discussed in terms of its connection to the Hawaiian language and the ways it affirms Native identity.—Using Indigenous rhetorics and language politics as frames, I articulate Native Hawaiians’ adoption of Pidgin as acts of Ellen Cushman’s cultural perseverance and Scott Richard—Lyons’s rhetorical sovereignty. Using the poem “The Question,” written in Pidgin by Hawaiian poet Noelle Kahanu as an example of Indigenous rhetoric, I discuss how teaching—it through this lens, compared to a minority rhetoric lens, captures different histories and experiences and engenders critical awareness of the identities students perform.
Rewriting Composition: Moving beyond a Discourse of Need
Authors: Horner Bruce
Published: February 2024

This essay argues that calls to end, move beyond, or expand composition participate in a discourse of need that accepts and reinforces the legitimacy of dominant, and
Anxious Uptakes: Nineteenth-Century Advice Literature as a Rhetorical Genre
Authors: Regaignon Dara Rossman
Published: February 2024

In this essay, I build on current work in rhetorical genre theory to read a historical genre for the affective uptake(s) it generates. Medically authored child-rearing advice literature developed as a genre in Britain between 1825 and 1850; this new genre instantiated anxiety as the central affect of middle-class maternal subjectivity. This rhetorical genre analysis both extends our understanding of this period and the history of motherhood; it also contributes to the developing affective turn in rhetorical genre studies by offering a way to begin reading for affective uptakes.
Guest Editors’ Introduction: Translingual Work
Authors: Lu Min-Zhan , Horner Bruce
Published: February 2024

This issue both reflects and builds on the efforts prompted by the 2011 College English essay “Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach,” by Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur. Contributions to this symposium contextualize the emergence of a translingual approach, explore the tension and interconnections between a translingual approach and a variety of fields, and explore the viability of a translingual approach in light of existing academic structures.
Translingual Writing and Teacher Development in Composition
Authors: Canagarajah Suresh
Published: February 2024

Teacher preparation for translingual writing differs from dominant forms of professional development wherein teachers are armed with predefined norms, materials, and knowledge for classroom purposes. Describing the principles that guide a teacher training course, this essay argues that teacher preparation for translingual writing should focus on encouraging teachers to construct their pedagogies with sensitivity to student, writing, and course diversity, thus continuing to develop their pedagogical knowledge and practice for changing contexts of writing. The essay outlines the principles (practice-based, dialogical, and ecological) that shape the course, describes its main features, and assesses its outcomes.
Emerging Voices: Capitalizing on Adult Education: The Economic Imperative for Literacy in 1960s Federal Policy Discourse
Authors: Bannon Jessica L.
Published: February 2024

This article reviews the history of federal adult education policy in order to draw composition scholars into broader educational policy discussions shaping literacy instruction at all educational levels. Adult education policy in the 1960s framed literacy as an element of human capital necessary for economic advancement, a limited characterization reinforcing assumptions that literacy education should generate more productive workers. These early policy discourses are reflected in our current economically driven educational climate, and I suggest that examining such historical and discursive contexts provides composition scholars and educators a stronger basis for actively engaging in policy conversations impacting their work.
Toward Job Security for Teaching-Track Composition Faculty: Recognizing and Rewarding Affective-Labor-in-Space
Authors: Lamos Steve
Published: February 2024

In this essay, I argue that contemporary efforts to advocate for job security for teaching-track faculty in English studies, especially in composition, can be enhanced by identifying and reconfiguring two types of negative affects: those circulating around the “affective labor” required to teach writing and those circulating around the educational spaces in which such labor typically occurs. After defining my terms, I begin analyzing the impact of these two types of negative affect on calls for teaching-track job security. I then use Grego and Thompson’s “studio” model of basic writing as an example of teaching work that can be used to generate and circulate positive affects regarding the “affective-labor-in-space” performed by writing teachers. Finally, I articulate three premises designed to help articulate and emplace positive affects regarding teaching-track composition work such that possibilities for job security are enhanced.
Conditions of (Im)Possibility: Postmonolingual Language Representations in Academic Literacies
Authors: Ayash Nancy Bou
Published: February 2024

This study accounts for the complex tensions that four FYW multilingual students from Lebanon experience as they strive to reconcile monolingual representations of language—as a fixed, internally uniform, and discrete entity—on one hand with their own commitment toward mobilizing their diverse language resources as fluid, malleable, and intermingling in their academic work. Based on an analysis of the "postmonolingual" nature of their representations of language and language relations as socially embedded and constructed, I argue that diverse, and often contradictory representations circulating in their minds have complicated, even stifled, these writers' translingual academic literacies and abilities.
An Imagined America: Rhetoric and Identity During the “First Student Rebellion in the Arab World”
Authors: Arnold Lisa
Published: February 2024

This essay considers a student-led protest that took place in 1882 at Syrian Protestant College as a moment of rhetorical negotiation in which (Arab) students unsuccessfully construct and deploy an "imagined America" to speak back to (American) faculty and administrators. This essay's historical analysis helps illustrate the high stakes and implicit promises of transnational knowledge economies today and in the past, as represented in and through the globalization of American-style institutions of higher education and the assumptions about citizenship, and literate practices, that are attached to it.
Making Classroom Writing Assessment More Visible, Equitable, and Portable through Digital Badging
Authors: West-Puckett Stephanie
Published: February 2024

Stephanie West-Puckett argues for open badging as an alternative born-digital assessment paradigm that can, when attendant to critical validity inquiry, promote full participation and more equitable outcomes for students of color and lower income students. Her case study of digital badging in first-year composition demonstrates how students and teachers can negotiate “good writing,” interrupting bias through the co-creation of digital badges that demystify disciplinary knowledge and serve as portable assessment objects that build social capital across contexts.
Extending the Conversation: A Catalyst for Change: Staging Dramatics for Preservice English Teachers through Improv, Role-Play, and Collaborative Reflection
Authors: Stewart Linda Sue
Published: February 2024

This article proposes that staging dramatic activities and collaborative reflection in English education courses accelerates preservice student learning about their subject matter, themselves, and their’future students. The elastic nature of dramatics matches the pressing demand for excellence in preservice teacher preparation for 21st century ELA classrooms.
Opening George Hillocks’s Territory of Literature
Authors: Levine Sarah , Bernstein Malayna
Published: February 2024

In this companion to George Hillocks’s final article, two of his students explore the “territory of literature” he maps out for teachers. We examine three claims George stakes in his territory:First, teachers and students should understand literature as a source of argument about moral and philosophical concepts; second, a sophisticated understanding of literature demands a set of explicit typologies that students can follow; and third, students need a systematic way of identifying and interpreting the effects of literary devices and rhetoric. Then we look beyond George’s article to consider additional sources and critical approaches to teaching through concepts, typologies, and a rhetoric of literature. As members of the next generation of “Hillocksian” English educators, we argue that George’s territory can be open land, home to many literary traditions and visions.
EJ in Focus: How Re-thinking Adolescence Helps Re-imagine the Teaching of English
Authors: Sarigianides Sophia Tatiana , Lewis Mark A. , Petrone Robert
Published: February 2024

In this framing article, the guest editors provide the theoretical framework for conceptualizing adolescence and adolescents driving this special issue of English—Journal. They also describe what they call a youth lens, an approach for reading and analyzing young adult literature that honors the idea of adolescence as a—construct.
Sex in the English Classroom: Text, Counter Text, and Social Text
Authors: Johnson Elisabeth
Published: February 2024

In this article, the author is concerned with the ways conceptions of adolescence and sexuality take hold in and beyond the English curriculum. Through a—classroom vignette, she considers some of the ways teachers might make more of moments when sex comes up and when planning interactions about sex with—youth.
A Thousand Writers: Voices of the NWP: The Serious Work of Writing
Authors: Smith Anna
Published: February 2024

This column seeks to explore the experiences of National Writing Project teachers as writers, teachers of writing, and educational leaders.
Under Discussion: Teaching Speaking and Listening: Care to Elaborate: Encouraging Students to Build on Others’ Ideas
Authors: Barker Lisa M.
Published: February 2024

This column seeks to provide a forum in which we can lean on each other to investigate and improve the quality of our classroom discussion leadership.
What the Whiteness Project Should Have Been: Poetry as a Collaborative Vehicle for Inquiry
Authors: Tanner Samuel Jaye
Published: February 2024

The author details the pedagogy that empowered his high school students to use poetry as a part of a theatrical inquiry into race and whiteness.
Soft(a)ware in the English Classroom: Feeling Walt Whitman: Introducing New Literatures and Quantitative Techniques to Interpret Poetry
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.—
High School Matters: Teaching Writing, Rather Than Writings
Authors: Heller Stephen
Published: February 2024

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators.
Teaching Writing with Radio
Authors: Levine Sarah , Franzel Johanna (Jones)
Published: February 2024

Teachers with no radio experience can help their students draw on “real world” radio standards to write strong, specific, and effective pieces, and then use everyday technology to share students’ stories with the world.
Making Meaning, Visibly: “Writing” and “Reading” Image Essays
Authors: Reilly Kathleen A. , Goen Jennifer
Published: February 2024

The authors challenged a group of mixed-ability tenth-grade students to use complex, evocative images and class discussion to “see” how readers make meaning with literary texts.
Art as Meaning-Making in a Secondary School English Classroom: A “Secret Compartment” Book Project on Toni Morrison’s Beloved
Authors: Wang Elaine
Published: February 2024

The secret compartment booklet offers a particularly challenging and valuable opportunity for students in secondary English classes to explore text through creating art and to engage students as active meaning makers.
Carpe Librum: Seize the (YA) Book: “The More Things Change …”: A New Generation of Historical Fiction
Authors: Skowron Schmidt Pauline
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.
Under Discussion: Teaching Speaking and Listening: Digitizing the Fishbowl: An Approach to Dialogic Discussion
Authors: Chisholm James S. , Quillen Bryan
Published: February 2024

This column seeks to provide a forum in which we can lean on each other to investigate and improve the quality of our classroom discussion leadership.
More Than a Reading Assignment: Using Nonfiction Texts as Mentor Texts
Authors: Taylor Laurel
Published: February 2024

This article discusses one teacher’s efforts to give her students a mentor text for a persuasive, research-based writing project.
From the Scroll to the Screen: Why Letters, Then and Now, Matter
Authors: Maupin Amy
Published: February 2024

The nonfiction letter offers students an opportunity to study a dying art while also gaining insights about people, places, and eras.
Navigating Nonfiction through Drama: Using Choral Reading to Create a Transaction with the Text
Authors: Brewer Brittany Morgan
Published: February 2024

This article explores how choral reading can be used as a drama tool in a classroom setting to engage students with nonfiction rhetoric while adhering to the Common Core State Standards.
Carpe Librum: Seize the (YA) Book: From STEM to STEAM: Finding and Redefining Female Tech Innovators in Literature
Authors: Sipley Gina
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.
In Search of Authentic Argument
Authors: Kohnen Angela M. , English Cathie
Published: February 2024

This article reports on a weeklong professional development seminar where teachers worked with professionals to understand the way argument functions in different fields.
Native Feminisms in Motion
Authors: Sabzalian Leilani
Published: February 2024

This piece illustrates a communityâ€™s attempts to reclaim physical and ideological space in an urban public school district, linking Native feminist theories to the production of three Native feminist texts by a collective of Native students, families, and educators.
Lingua Anglia: Bridging Language and Learners--Bridging Literacies: Poetic Translation as an Act of Empowerment
Authors: Winet Kristin , Winet Ryan L.
Published: February 2024

“Lingua Anglia: Bridging Language and Learners” discusses critical, transformative, and powerful ways to support students’ acquisition of Standard English.
Moving English Classrooms toward Critical Possibilities
Authors: Hendrix-Soto Aimee
Published: February 2024

Through engagement with critical literacies and multiliteracies, an urban classroom becomes a space of agency and resistance for students and teacher alike.
Opening the Door for Cross-Disciplinary Literacy: Doing History and Writing in a High School to University Collaboration
Authors: Newman Beatrice Mendez , Rosas Penny
Published: February 2024

Drawing on the work of Denstaedt, Roop, and Best (NCTE), the authors devise and coteach an interdisciplinary unit based on proslavery and abolitionist primary documents to guide students in doing history and doing writing.
Collaborative Professional Development through a Critique Protocol
Authors: Sprouse Michelle Lee
Published: February 2024

The most common forms of teacher professional development are ineffective and lead to low teacher satisfaction. A critique protocol offers an alternative that intellectually engages teachers and fosters meaningful collaboration at different career stages.
The Irrationality of Antiracist Empathy
Authors: Patel Leigh
Published: February 2024

The author intersectionally examines the arguments around the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as evidence of the curricular centrality of whiteness. She calls for educators to attend the material purposes of oppression.
The Top Five Reasons We Love Giving Students Choice in Reading
Authors: Skeeters Keri
Published: February 2024

This team of teachers offers their experiences in negotiating and adjusting curriculum with student input.
Telling a Different Type of Story: Inviting Youth Voice through Community Partnerships
Authors: Doerr-Stevens Candance , Harvill William
Published: February 2024

What teachers perceive as social justice may differ greatly from what students see as relevant and just. Furthermore, what teacher educators and teachers view as justice-oriented education may differ significantly from what community partners and agencies see as locally relevant. Wanting to provide high school English students the same opportunities to enact change in their communities, the authors invited ninth graders to pick up the microphone, audio recorder, and camera in order to craft their own community stories. What issues did they address? With whom did they partner? And whose voices did they include? These questions and more shape this exploration
Collaboration and Capacity Building to Transform Evaluations of Text Complexity
Authors: Glaus Marci , Schmidt Tessa Michaelson , Adams Laura , Novak Barb
Published: February 2024

This manuscript focuses on the collaboration among state level librarian, English language arts, and literacy leaders surrounding text selection, evaluation, and diverse voices in curriculum, including the continued need for a focus on diverse children’s and young adult literature, teachers and librarians working together for text selection purposes, including representation and diversity and critical literacy considerations in the evaluation of text complexity, the examination of young adult literature and creator/s of these texts, and cultivating spaces for students to see themselves and others in what they read, with permission to ask critical questions.
Children’s Literature Reviews: Memoirs, Magic, and Mutiny: Marvelous Titles to Share in K–8 Classrooms
Authors: McNair Jonda C. , Day Deanna , Möller Karla J. , Zapata Angie
Published: February 2024

This unthemed children's literature reviews column features a selection of some of our favorite recently published titles across several genres. It includes biographies, informational text, contemporary realistic fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, and concept books. Readers will find a range of titles about various topics such as Japanese internment camps, the Vietnam War, lucha libre, colors, and even a newborn elephant.
Research & Policy: Redesigning the Everyday: Recognizing Creativity in Student Writing and Multimodal Composing
Authors: Ranker Jason
Published: February 2024

In this column, the author explores everyday creativity in writing and multimodal composing from a sociocultural perspective. Central to this perspective is the idea that elements of students’ creative compositions originate from their social interactions and participation in culture and everyday life. During creative composing processes, students first isolate and then draw upon elements from previous experiences and events in a process referred to as “dissociation.” Then, in a process of association, the student-creator assembles or redesigns the isolated elements by bringing them into new and complex relational wholes along with elements that have been isolated from other events and contexts. Using this perspective on creativity, teachers can play a crucial role in recognizing and supporting students’ creative multimodal composing processes as they emerge.
Professional Book Reviews: Exploration, Inquiry, and Inspiration for Writing
Authors: Spence Lucy , A. Oglan Victoria
Published: February 2024

The article reviews three books that will inspire teachers to teach writing with creativity. The first book focuses on early childhood: Playful Writing: 150 Open-Ended
Children’s Literature Reviews: Creativity and Children’s Literature
Authors: C.McNair Jonda , Day Deanna , J. Möller Karla , Zapatta Angie
Published: February 2024

This children’s literature review column focuses on books that are creative in terms of style and content as well as those that emphasize the creative exploits of numerous individuals. Readers of this column will find out about people such as the famed artist couple, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Lois Ehlert, the illustrator of the classic Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and Josephine Baker, the famous dancer.
Multimodal Literacy: From Theories to Practices
Authors: Serafini Frank
Published: February 2024

The creation of visual images and multimodal texts allows humans to communicate feelings and ideas across time and space, develop relationships with one another, and document the details of everyday experiences. With greater frequency, students are confronted with texts that include visual images and a variety of design features rather than texts that focus primarily on written language. The inclusion of multimodal features in addition to written language presents challenges to novice readers as they work within and across multiple sign systems to construct meaning. The purpose of this article is to offer a framework for bringing theories of multimodal literacies into the classroom, to reconsider the text as a visual object, semiotic resource, and sociocultural artifact, and to offer instructional approaches for developing students’ interpretive repertoires.
Research and Policy: Doing What You Can: Considering Ways to Address LGBT Topics in Language Arts Curricula
Authors: Hermann-Wilmarth Jill M. , Ryan Caitlin L.
Published: February 2024

In this column, using a range of theoretical and pedagogical tools, the authors highlight how classroom teachers might make use of multiple approaches to addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) topics in their variously situated classrooms. Specifically, they outline three approaches to addressing LGBT topics through literature, each with its own benefits, drawbacks, possibilities, and risks—including books with LGBT characters, reading “straight” books through a “queer lens,” and queering LGBT-inclusive books. In these ways, the authors hope to help teachers shift the conversation away from what they think they can’t do to what they could do. They want to move teachers from considering if they can include particular lessons or particular texts in their instruction to how they might find multiple, even creative, ways to address the larger systems that enable homophobia and heterosexism in the first place.
Professional Book Reviews: Change, Challenge, and Opportunity: Teachers’ Professional Concerns
Authors: DeFord Diane , Frazier Jennipher , Goodman Janie , Laman Tasha , Oglan Victoria A. , Sanderson Catherine , Smith Dywanna , Steele Paige , Stephens Diane , Stowe Jennifer , Vanderburg Michelle , Wang Yang , Wells Melissa
Published: February 2024

Change and growth are integral elements of the teaching profession that oftentimes place increased demands on the professional lives of teachers. And with these increased demands, many teachers face professional concerns that impact them in significant ways. Addressing concerns provides both challenges and opportunities that may provide the impetus for teachers’ professional growth and change. This issue explores a variety of resources that address teachers’ professional concerns and reflects on the future directions of education and the tireless work of teachers everywhere.
Children’s Literature Reviews: 2014 Notable Children’s Poetry Books
Authors: McNair Jonda C. , Day Deanna , Möller Karla J. , Zapata Angie
Published: February 2024

This children’s literature review column focuses on outstanding books of poetry published in 2014.
Commentaries: Teacher Performance Assessment
Authors: Smagorinsky Peter , Kottke Sean , Lents Arlene , McPhee Paula , Dodson Meredith , Leonard Peter , Swartz Claudinette (Didi) , Barker John
Published: February 2024

Three commentaries center around the theme of teacher performance assessment. First, Peter Smagorinsky discusses growth through language arts and the conundrum of teacher assessment. Then Sean Kottke, Paula McPhee, Arlene Lents, and Meredith Dodson discuss the importance of community in teacher preparation. Finally, Peter Leonard, Claudinette (Didi) Swartz, and John Barker discuss performance assessments for teacher evaluation in the Chicago Public Schools.
Children’s Literature Reviews: 2015 Charlotte Huck and Orbis Pictus Awards
Authors: Giorgis Cyndi , Fain Jeanne Gilliam , Herbeck Joyce , LeJeune Marie , Lowery Ruth McKoy , Richardson Marianne , Sullivan Ed
Published: February 2024

The award committees review books chosen for the 2015 awards.
Conversation Currents: Teaching ELA from an International Comparative Perspective: An Interview with Marc Tucker
Authors: Conley Mark , Seglem Robyn , Tucker Marc
Published: February 2024

The Conversation Currents department is designed to provide diverse perspectives about key issues in education. The guest editors for this issue invited Marc Tucker to talk about his views on English language arts instruction in an international comparative context. Tucker is head of the National Center on Education and the Economy, the founder of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and a frequent writer about international comparisons among countries with regard to their educational systems and educational achievement.
Career Dream Drawings: Children’s Visions of Professions in Future Workscapes
Authors: Turner Jennifer D.
Published: February 2024

This article highlights career dream drawings as a tool for language arts teachers to learn more about children’s professional aspirations. I first situate the concept of career dreams in relation to literacy, identity, and multimodality. From this sociocultural frame, career dream drawings are visual renderings of the professional identities, artifacts, and literacies that children envision taking up in future “workscapes” as adults. Next, I focus on the career dream drawings created by 37 children in a university-sponsored summer reading clinic, illustrating how the career dream drawings served as multimodal spaces where children could imagine themselves as future professionals effectively using particular literacies and tools in a variety of imagined workplaces. Finally, I conclude the article with lessons that language arts educators can learn from examining children’s career dream drawings.
Commentaries: Common Core or Rotten Core? Part II
Authors: Wall Jennifer Kingma , Kane Sharon , Laughter Judson C. , Maniates Helen , Martin Susan D. , Dismuke Sherry
Published: February 2024

These reader commentaries provide insight into member perspectives on Common Core.
Research and Policy: unbalanced Literacy: Reflections on the Common Core
Authors: Newkirk Thomas
Published: February 2024

While the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in ELA were welcomed by many progressive educators, their implementation has raised serious questions of viability. This review looks specifically at two key features of the reading standards-the focus on “text dependent” questions and the benchmarks for “text complexity.” It is argued that text dependency, with its limiting focus on “the text itself, fails to account for the transaction between reader and text. The higher standards for text complexity were created in the belief that the difficulty of texts in elementary schools has declined in recent decades, a claim disputed by reading experts. The review concludes that there is little empirical evidence that the proposed dramatic increases in text complexity are warranted or even possible.
Conversation Currents: Shining Light between a Rock and a Hard Place
Authors: Larson Joanne , Shannon Patrick
Published: February 2024

In this column, the editors of Language Arts talk with Joanne Larson and Patrick Shannon, scholars who spoke to the themed issue, Common Core, Rotten Core: Part II. These researchers highlight the role that the Common Core has served in informing the practices of teachers and the subsequent effects on student learning. They also discuss the importance of teacher decision-making as critical to positioning students to act democratically in the world.
Research & Policy: Stories Still Matter: Rethinking the Role of Diverse Children’s Literature Today
Authors: Thomas Ebony Elizabeth
Published: February 2024

This essay reviews the landscape of diversity in children’s literature one year after NCTE’s Resolution on the Need for Diverse Children’s and Young Adult Books.
Children’s Literature Reviews: The 2016 Notable Children’s Books in the English Language Arts
Authors: Draper Christine A. , Freeman Evelyn B. , Jewett Pamela C. , Koblitz Dick , Porter Diana , Sanders Jennifer , Sims Holly
Published: February 2024

The 2016 Notable Children’s Books, unique in language and/or style, encourage readers to discover quality texts that linger long after the pages have been read.
Examining Emotional Rules in the English Classroom: A Critical Discourse Analysis of One Student’s Literary Responses in Two Academic Contexts
Authors: Thein Amanda Haertling , Guise Megan , Sloan DeAnn Long
Published: February 2024

Current research suggests that emotional investment is essential for helping students critically engage in learning in the English language arts classroom. Yet, scholarship on the role of emotion in literary response has been limited, focusing chiefly on considerations of the merits of personal response—a focus that reflects dominant theories of emotion as located in the individual. Tethered to the personal, emotion has been conceptualized as a peripheral part of literary engagement—as something to be ignored, leveraged, or gotten beyond in an effort to move students toward more substantial textual engagement. This paper proposes that a sociocultural theory of emotion provides a new lens for considering how emotion engages students in literature learning. In this view, emotion is in the fabric of every classroom context, manifesting as “emotional rules” that have material implications for learning. Constructed using methods from Critical Discourse Analysis, the case study outlined in this paper demonstrates how emotional rules were perceived, taken up, and even transformed by one student, Nina, in two discussion contexts—a seminar circle and a literature circle—playing a central role in the work of literature learning in each context. Our findings advance scholarship on the relationship between response and emotion by suggesting that emotion cannot simply be invited in or left out of the literature classroom in the interest of moving students toward literary engagement, but instead is already fundamentally a part of literary engagement and must be noticed, interrogated, and sometimes disrupted in the interest of expanding interpretive possibilities.
The Dialogic Interplay of Writing and Teaching Writing: Teacher-Writers’ Talk and Textual Practices across Contexts
Authors: Woodard Rebecca
Published: February 2024

This study uses dialogic theory to understand teacher-writers’ practices across in- and out-of-school contexts. Using case study methods to closely observe and interview a middle school teacher and a high school teacher, as well as analyze their writing, the study identified similarities in the teachers’ appropriations of language, textual practices, and ideologies across contexts. However, each teacher appropriated distinct practices in discipline-specific ways, with one focused onthe literate practices of creative writers and the other focused on the literate practices of online, networked writers. These contrastive examples highlight ways in which teacher-writers’ literate and instructional activities dialogically inform each other in both similar and distinct ways. Ultimately, I make the argument that dialogic perspectives that attend to teachers’ out-of-school practices provide richer, more complex understandings of instructional practice than currently popular conceptions of “best practices” and “value-added” teaching.
#WhoNeedsDiverseBooks?: Preservice Teachers and Religious Neutrality with Children’s Literature
Authors: Dávila Denise
Published: February 2024

The social media campaign #WeNeedDiverseBooks has called for more varied works of literature. However, one of the arguments for increasing the visibility of diverse books has not received much attention: using #WNDB to cultivate religiously pluralistic thinkers. Currently, there is a conflict between the evasion of religious neutrality in English language arts (ELA) instruction and the need to prepare young people to become pluralistic thinkers in a global society. This article examines three lines of inquiry: How likely are preservice teachers to (a) include children’s books with religious diversity in their future classrooms, (b) discuss the religious content of the books with their future students, and/or (c) employ dominant social discourses in interpreting the religious content? Grounded in theories of religious neutrality, social discourses, and cultural superiority,the study analyzes 79 preservice teachers’ responses to the cultural-religious milieu of the renowned picture book memoir In My Family/En Mi Familia (Garza, 1996). The corpus of data, which includes the preservice teachers’ written reflections and responses to a set of open-ended questions,indicates that privileging a nonreligious reading lens and excluding relevant religious perspectives from discussions about diverse works of children’s literature can inadvertently contribute to the defamation of other cultures and religious traditions. The study underscores the responsibility of teacher educators to help preservice teachers take a religiously neutral approach to ELA instruction.
Forum: Teaching Close Reading with Complex Texts across Content Areas
Authors: Fang Zhihui
Published: February 2024

The Common Core State Standards accords great importance to close reading, but offers no specific guidelines for how it can or should be taught. This essay provides a critical review of existing instructional models of close reading and addresses issues related to their implementation in content area classrooms. It shows that current models of close reading offer different ways of engaging students in their interaction with complex texts, with some focusing on reading and rereading for understanding and others providing more intensive linguistic support. It argues that effective close reading practices must attend simultaneously to all key elements involved in the complex process of reading, including the reader, the text, the task, and the context, with a special emphasis on developing students’ understanding of how language and other semiotic systems construct meaning, embed ideology, and structure discourse in genre- and discipline-specific ways. The essay demonstrates that the contention about what close reading is and how it could be implemented stems from its varied interpretations by scholars with different theoretical and epistemological beliefs about reading, language, text, literacy, and schooling. It further suggests that an awareness of the critical issues that have been raised about close reading can help teachers avoid potential pitfalls and maximize effectiveness when implementing the practice.
Leaning In to Discomfort: Preparing Literacy Teachers for Gender and Sexual Diversity
Authors: Staley Sara , Leonardi Bethy
Published: February 2024

Educational literacy scholars have demonstrated the rich possibilities of the English language arts, and of queer-inclusive and critical literacy practices in particular, to disrupt heteronormativity and affirm gender and sexual diversity (GSD). However, there are few empirical studies that report what’s involved in preparing literacy teachers to organize classrooms in which recommendations for inclusive practice can land safely. In this article, we provide an account of what happened when we endeavored to prepare a group of secondary preservice literacy teachers for GSD-inclusive education in the context of a university-based literacy methods course and the negotiation of discomfort that ensued. Drawing on queer theoretical perspectives and Kumashiro’s (2001) framework of anti-oppressive education—which figures an important relationship among the concepts of desire, resistance, and crisis in unlearning common sense—we explore how the methods curriculum put many students into a state of emotional crisis. The sources of participants’ discomfort included learning that teachers have been complicit with the oppression of queer youth and wrestling with questions about how to bring their commitments to GSD-inclusive literacy instruction to bear in practice. Our findings suggest that participants who were willing to move toward their discomfort—what we call a deliberate move to lean in—positioned themselves to become strong advocates for queer youth. We argue that emotional discomfort should be figured as a productive tension in queer interventions in English education. Toward that end, we offer leaning in as a generative tool for grappling with the dynamics of heterosexism, homophobia,and broader oppression.
Feature: An Analysis of Writing Assessment Books Published before and after the Year 2000
Authors: Morris William , Greeve Curt , Knowles Eliot , Huon Brain
Published: February 2024

This essay provides a comparative analysis of a large number of texts devoted to writing assessment, analyses that help answer questions about writing assessment volumes and that provide a picture of writing assessment scholarship over a twenty-five-year period.
Instructional Note: Students as Storytellers: Teaching Rhetorical Strategies through Folktales
Authors: Howard Jeffrey
Published: February 2024

An instructional note on one method of using folktales as texts in the composition classroom to help students gain a basic understanding of agenda and the way objectives and ideologies can shape information.
Poem: Outcomes
Authors: Andersen Jonathan
Published: February 2024

An instructional note on one method of using folktales as texts in the composition classroom to help students gain a basic understanding of agenda and the way objectives and ideologies can shape information.
Classroom Research Progress Report: Understanding the Process and Criteria by Which Instructors Select Readings
Authors: Escobar Jennifer , Henriquez Aja
Published: February 2024

This article reveals the results of a pilot survey that seeks to answer the following question: what is the process by which English instructors select readings?
Feature: Student Rationale for Self-Placement into First-Year Composition: Decision Making and Directed Self-Placement
Authors: Kenner Kylie
Published: February 2024

This research examines the experiences of six incoming students at a public university in Northern California to investigate their rationale for self-placement into first-year composition and their perceptions of their choices at different points throughout their first semester of college.
Feature: Unpredictable Journeys: Academically At-Risk Students, Developmental Education Reform, and the Two-Year College
Authors: Baird Giordano Joanne , Hassel Holly
Published: February 2024

This article reports findings from a study of thirty-eight academically underprepared first-year students’ transition to college and maps out the challenges and successes they experienced in their transition to college-level reading, writing, and thinking.
Assessing the Accelerated Learning Program Model for Linguistically Diverse Developmental Writing Students
Authors: Anderst Leah , Maloy Jennifer , Shahar Jed
Published: February 2024

This article uses quantitative and qualitative means to assess the impact of an Accelerated Learning Program on the performance and satisfaction of students designated ESL and developmental at a large, urban community college.
Student-Athletes, Prior Knowledge, and Threshold Concepts
Authors: Michael Rifenburg J.
Published: February 2024

Pulling data from a year-long case study into a Division II men’s basketball team, this article suggests how threshold concepts as currently conceptualized and implemented in first-year composition pedagogy and curriculum could more directly consider unique forms of literacies student-athletes bring into the classroom.
Review Essay: Minimizing the Distance in Online Writing Courses through Student Engagement
Authors: Dockter Jason , Borgman Jessie
Published: February 2024

Applied Pedagogies: Strategies for Online Writing Instruction, edited by Daniel Ruefman and Abigail G. Scheg. Boulder: UP of Colorado for Utah State UP, 2016. Print.

Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction, edited by Beth L. Hewett and Kevin Eric DePew. Fort Collins: WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, 2015. Print.

A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI) by the CCCC Committee on Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction. Conference on College Composition and Communication. Mar. 2013. Web.
“They Teach Their Hearts Out”:Communicating the Importance of Writing
Authors: Zumbrunn Sharon
Published: February 2024

Sharon Zumbrunn discusses a study concerning students’ (in grades 3–5) perceptions of the ways in which their teachers communicate the importance of writing. The findings—have much to say about effective writing instruction.
Learning Together in Holistic Online Critical Professional Development Spaces
Authors: Albers Peggy , Angay-Crowder Tuba , Turnbull Sarah , Cho Aram , Shin Ji Hye , Eun Pang Myoung , Pace Christi , Sena Mandi , Wang Huan , Jung Jin Kyeong
Published: February 2024

The authors describe a critical literacy professional development project called Global Conversations in Literacy Research through which participants from all over the—world engage in live, issue-oriented discussions around literacy that are based on research and theory.
Developing Disciplinary Literacy through Classroom Blogging
Authors: M.Wickens Corrine , Manderino Michael , Andreasen Glover Elsa
Published: February 2024

Classroom blogging can be an effective tool through which to apprentice students in appropriate disciplinary thinking and reasoning skills. Inquiry is the basis for disciplinary literacy. Effectively framed blog posts can situate learning tasks from an inquiry stance. Another key component of disciplinary literacy is “insider” disciplinary discourse. The article demonstrates how a specific teacher effectively invites students into the disciplines and facilitates students’ introduction into reading, writing, and talking as disciplinary specialists. Lastly, we note how the blogging tasks facilitate students’ interpretation of disciplinary texts and production of arguments around central questions in the discipline. This article focuses on one middle grade teacher to demonstrate how such classroom blogging activities can facilitate the development of disciplinary thinking and reasoning with historical texts and literature, especially through engaging students in teacher-framed inquiry, supporting their reading of disciplinary texts, and encouraging student interpretation and writing through their classroom blog.
Why Should Students Want to Do a Close Reading?
Authors: Beltramo J. Luciano , Stillman Jamy
Published: February 2024

This article explores the issue of student interest in close reading. In particular, it raises questions about the limited focus on student engagement in much of the current discourse about close reading and considers how teachers might build and sustain the student interest necessary for literacy activity, especially close reading. Specifically, we draw on sociocultural perspectives on literacy and emerging findings from our own research on teachers’ work with the Common Core Standards to describe a set of classroom practices we believe hold promise for facilitating engagement in close reading, particularly among students from historically underserved communities.
Using Writing to Support Close Reading: Engagement and Evidence from the Text
Authors: Medlin Hasty Michelle , Schrodt Katie Edwards
Published: February 2024

Data from a yearlong study of 12 eighth graders with reading difficulties demonstrate how literacy notebooks support close reading. The study’s data show that as students recorded words, phrases, and personal responses while reading, they became curious about the text, cited evidence from the text to support their responses, were engaged in the story, and were motivated to continue reading. Developing the habit of close reading using literacy notebooks helped students to understand the text deeply and therefore to enjoy reading in a way that most of the students had not previously done.
Migrant Students Scaffolding and Writing Their Own Stories: From Socioculturally Relevant Enabling Mentor Texts to Collaborative Student Narratives
Authors: Beck Scott A. , Stevenson Alma D.
Published: February 2024

Children of migrant farmworkers drop out of school more than any other group. They need and deserve academic support that is socioculturally relevant to their lives. This article describes an innovative summer literacy program for intermediate and middle level children of migrant farmworkers that presented them with more than two dozen children’s picture story books with migrancy themes and systematically documented their responses to the books. Then, using these mentor texts and their responses as scaffolding, the students collaborated to create semi-autobiographical, illustrated narratives about growing up as migrants. These student-created CPSBs challenge our society’s erasure of and hostility toward migrants.
Kindling the Pedagogic Imagination: Preservice Teachers Writing with Social Media
Authors: M.Rish Ryan , E.Pytash Kristine
Published: February 2024

In this essay, two teacher educators reflect on the experience of four preservice English/language arts teachers who participated in a social media project across seven university campuses. For the #walkmyworld project, the preservice teachers shared pictures and videos, annotated and wrote poetry, and read and responded to each other. The project helped the preservice teachers consider how they could support student writing in relationship to their identities, responsive audiences, and multimodal composition. As what counts as writing and who counts as a writer seems to be narrowing in classrooms, the project served to kindle the pedagogic imagination of the participants.