Through a consideration of literacies in theory and international policy, this article pushes at the edges of existing frameworks of functional and sociocultural literacies. In critique of existing policy directives, the author explores an approach to literacy that engages in the affective and posthuman relationality of human and environment and…

Teachers and school librarians know that giving students the freedom to choose what to read from a variety of materials is the most effective way to foster a love of reading. Curiosity, pre-existing interests, or even a desire for connection cause students to reach for books that inform instead of entertain. But a genre of books is often left out…

A plethora of services in early childhood care and education has not sufficiently resulted in equitable practice for families and, specifically, families of Color across the globe. Despite numerous programs geared toward alleviating literacy challenges, families of Color worldwide continue to experience Eurocentric approaches to addressing the…

Many children bring rich multimodal literacy practices into their classrooms, with experience weaving between paper and digital texts. In order to support children's multimodal meaning making, teachers need first to understand the multimodal practices that children bring into the classroom in order to then develop instruction that builds on, and…

This article explores the potential of multimodal literacies to support a more equitable, inclusive approach to literacy instruction. Approaching multimodal literacies with an asset-based stance toward students with respect to culture, language, and dis/ability, multimodal literacies can support the enactment of culturally relevant pedagogy as…

In this study, we examine two teachers' talk about literacy as they describe literacy events and practices throughout multiple contexts. We draw the theoretical framework of discourse and literacy as a social practice to illustrate the potential ways these first-year English teachers talk and have talked about literacy during their time as English…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to summarise key literature related to the Foundation for Learning and Literacy's Touchstone 4 (creativity, the arts and imagination). Design/methodology/approach: This article reviews a selection of relevant studies exploring the contributions of creativity, imagination and the arts to traditional literacy…

This article focuses on the extraordinary literacies of four Haitian and Haitian American Girls enrolled in a middle grades out-of-school literacy program in Miami, Florida. I examine how the girls narrated Black transnational girlhood through autobiographical writings, classroom discussions, and media analyses. I define the girls' intellectual…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the characteristics of playful literacies in case study research examining digital games in secondary English classrooms. It analyzes how educators use play as a resource for meaning-making and the impacts of play on student learning. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used a keyword search in relevant…

Artificial Intelligence technologies are becoming ubiquitous, transforming the workforce by altering or creating jobs and influencing decisions that affect minority communities. The necessity of AI literacy, comprising knowledge and skills for critical interaction with AI, is increasingly important. Multilingual learners, engaging with both every…

As teacher educators, we believe it is critical for preservice teachers (PSTs) to recognize the many cultural assets that learners bring to today's diverse classrooms and to use these assets in their instruction. It is key to the literacy success of all students, particularly children of low socioeconomic status, multilingual learners, children of…

Much attention has been paid to the introduction of a culturally responsive curriculum in early childhood education in our increasingly globalized society to support young children of diverse cultural and linguistic (CLD) backgrounds. With the rise of twenty-first century concepts of what literacy means in the digital age, traditional literacy…

Globally, literacy can be conceived of in different ways. Two perspectives that have influenced adult literacy policy internationally are the economic functionalist and the sociocultural. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Maori educators have repeatedly advanced a matauranga Maori perspective of literacy. This perspective has parallels with the embodied,…

This qualitative research investigated two preservice teachers' multimodal aesthetic reader responses to a wordless picture book in a literacy methods course. This study took up a sociocultural perspective that was informed by transactional reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1978, 1986, 2013) and further supported by a pedagogy of…

This article examines a culturally sustaining approach to learning about and enacting multimodal literacy instruction that was developed during a field-based reading methods course for elementary preservice teachers. Despite a large body of work exploring preservice teachers' learning about multimodal literacies, few studies have explored their…