The authors, working from a "new literacies studies" perspective, suggest that educators can better teach their students if they develop their own knowledge of the purposes, types, and language conventions students use in their informal out-of-school literacy practices. The purpose of this study was to identify the literacy practices…

Approached as an epistemology, implementing a constructivist workshop approach to literacy can challenge the traditional paradigm of teacher-focused instruction and transform to one where students construct knowledge together and learn through active engagement in authentic reading and writing. This study illustrated how two third-grade teachers…

In this qualitative case study, we examine the texture of talk in the booktalks of a fifth-grade classroom where authentic classroom discussions were common. The discourse analysis of classroom transcripts yielded 13 overlapping move categories describing the talk of the teacher, and nine the talk of the students. A comparison between authentic…

This case study research reports on elementary (grade 8) and secondary school (grade 9) teachers' participation in job-embedded, professional learning and engagement in collaborative inquiry. Teachers constructed an inquiry-oriented media literacy unit following the collaborative inquiry model. The current study sought to investigate how…

Schooling can play a role in bolstering a sense of community, but research suggests that curriculum may serve to isolate teachers and students from their rural surroundings. In this qualitative case study, we asked if the literacy curriculum and instruction supported readers to make connections to their rural setting. We analyzed curriculum…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was threefold. First, it sought to identify factors which influence belief change of teachers who pursued master's literacy education programs. Second, this study sought to determine whether teachers' experiences in the master's programs were transformative, and if so, to what extent.…

Imagine an active happily engaged, communicative, curious group of four-year-old children investigating and discovering as they play together in an early childhood classroom. Imagine yet again, the teacher beckoning them to gather on the rug to listen to a story. What happens next? Are the children allowed to continue in this curiosity-seeking,…

Researchers agree that language and literacy derive from the first days of a child's life. Children become literate members in society by listening and interacting with the people that surround them. This study examines how children develop literacy through play by looking closely at the benefits of uninterrupted play and how it encourages…

This article presents the results of a three-year study of "Gamestar Mechanic" (www.gamestarmechanic.com), a flash-based multiplayer online role-playing game developed for the MacArthur Foundation's digital media learning initiative by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Gamelab in New York. The game's objective is to help children…