Although research illustrates the benefits of biliteracy, most bilingual students will not have access to a bilingual education program in which they receive official instruction in all their languages. However, the English language arts can become a space where any teacher can support students' biliteracy through purposeful curricular,…

African immigrants in the US and across the globe are confronted with issues of language and culture retention, resistance to the loss of the same, and reconstruction of their identities while navigating the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of the host nations. The experiences of one such family are shared through the African Oral…

In this study, we examine educators' orientations to the teaching of "standardized English" (SE)--an idealized form often associated with academic and professional contexts. The perceived status of SE is reinforced by normative standard language ideologies and is often oriented as "correct" and necessary for success in…

Language arts and literacy curricula around the world have been advocating for the teaching and learning of literature in multiple forms. However, apparently in much of classroom practice, little attention has been given to distinguishing the literary distinctiveness of multiple forms of ostensibly the same story. Developing an appreciation of the…

Argumentation, one of the foundational pillars of writing instruction in K-12 schools, is consistently framed in literacy policy, curriculum, and assessment as a crucial skill youth need to participate in democratic deliberation. Yet the normative emphases in argument discourse on individual subjectivity, binary analysis, and competitive social…

The purpose of this qualitative project is to examine the use of a noticing assignment in one fourth-grade dual language arts classroom. We, the authors, consider the texts most interesting to students and how these texts relate to humanizing and responsive writing pedagogies. Learning to write in K-12 schooling contexts is often dictated by…

This article reports findings from a qualitative study of Spanish-English code-switching--or "Spanglish"--among bilingual Latina/Latino sixth graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles. Analysis of the data revealed significant parallels between the skills embedded in students' everyday use of "Spanglish" and the skills…

Permeable textual discussion occurs when the unofficial texts and discursive practices and personal histories that are already recognized and valued in students' cultures are scaffolds to academically sanctioned literacies. Ideally, permeable textual discussions are safe havens where students' identities (racial, gender, world views) are…

The debate surrounding how best to support African American student writers continues today as the gap between achievement scores persists. This qualitative analysis documents the classroom structures and instructional practices of two English Language Arts teachers working in a predominately African American public middle school, whose students…

This article discusses the ways issues of audience and authority are encountered and addressed by classroom teachers who write journal articles for publication. Drawing on an interview study of K-12 classroom teachers who have published articles in NCTE's journals Language Arts, Voices from the Middle, and English Journal, we show that teachers…

Despite a growing awareness among teachers of the importance of recognizing and valuing a broader range of students' literate resources and experiences, including those that are culturally and linguistically linked, in many language arts classrooms students' literacy practices continue to be marginalized--remaining peripheral to, if not at odds…

This teacher-researcher study explored the manner in which students created video compositions in a secondary English language arts media studies program. A review of research literature indicates fundamental differences between print and video compositions, which include modality of representation, task setting, and curricular role. Another…

This study was conducted by members of a site of the California Writing Project in partnership with a large, urban, low-SES school district where 93% of the students speak English as a second language and 69% are designated Limited English Proficient. Over an eight-year period, a relatively stable group of 55 secondary teachers engaged in ongoing…

Contends that issues that occur at the intersection of culture and interaction with learning and instruction have been too sharply restricted in scholarly studies on the teaching of English language arts. Suggests that the bifurcation of concerns among language educators is in part a reflection of school, not scholarly, issues. (MS)

David E. Kirkland argues that our understanding of literate practice in relation to space needs to be radically reworked to account for new digital dimensions that are dispersed, discontinuous, and yet deeply woven into everyday and institutional worlds. His account highlights the way these digital spaces pepper the official landscape of…