This holistic single-case study aimed to understand the impact of digital story telling (DST) on the identity expressions of Native American youth. The question that guided the study asks, 'How do Native American adolescents in a rural, tribal-run after-school programme for Indigenous youth explore and express who they are through digital story…

Ivan (pseudonym), the son of Mexican migrant farmworkers, rarely spent more than six months in the same school and by high school was still classified as an English language learner. This article traces Ivan's experiences as a language learner and writer, telling his story in his own words through his writing and ethnographic data collected during…

Social media are becoming a critical part of communication in everyday lives and are a common form of communication for many students in and outside of school. Accordingly, English learner (EL) students are using social media-based communication to gather information, maintain friendships, and express multiple identities. Considering that social…

National education reform agendas are increasingly prevalent in school systems around the world. Whilst we have a substantial body of research exploring the ways in which schools manage change agendas, there is less discussion of the impacts these agendas may have on beginning teachers and their retention in the profession. Here I report on a…

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…

In the United States there are significant gaps in college-going between high-income and low-income students and between White students and African American and Latino/a students. A number of factors contribute to this persistent gap. Among these factors are the rising cost of college attendance and the complexity of the financial aid process. The…

The article features a graduate literacy teacher education course that compelled students to think in terms of design and multimodality. In an effort to innovate our own literacy teacher education work, we came together to devise a course that encouraged students to adopt a design lens to their thinking, planning, and assessing of literacy…

Teacher education programs across the United States must prepare teachers who have the content area knowledge, pedagogical expertise, and cultural competence needed to teach an increasingly diverse student population. One consistent suggestion for programs committed to preparing culturally responsive teachers is to incorporate investigations of…

This article documents an extended Mexican family's social practices surrounding literacy as they engage with bilingual children's literature in a unique context that draws from both home and school without the pressures of curriculum mandates. The research is situated within the southeastern United States where English-dominant practices permeate…

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…

In this article, the authors explore the ways in which a selection of student teachers from two universities in Canada expressed their feelings of preparedness to teach literacy in elementary classrooms. The student teachers had experienced various approaches to literacy teaching as they progressed through their teacher education program. These…

Objective: To record the views of individuals whose main professional role is community liaison on dental health education material for culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Methods: Tape-recorded interviews were undertaken, reviewed by two individuals and themes identified. Results: Twenty four individuals were interviewed out of a…