It is well-established in both scholarship and policy documents that students' home language practices can be leveraged as a key resource for their learning. However, it can be challenging for teachers to embed students' language resources in class activities in ways that link to wider learning objectives. We report how the inclusion of home…

A majority of U.S. states have established a "Seal of Biliteracy" (SoBL) to recognize students' multilingualism. Primarily under the purview of bilingual and world language education, the field of literacy research has remained largely silent on these seals. Yet, the authority these seals grant to state institutions for credentialing…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how beginner English Language Learners (ELLs) at the high school level were able to develop literacy skills in English by working collaboratively, accessing content presented which employed multimedia and multimodal resources, and expressing their learning through similar modes. The…

Across curricular terrains in education in North America, the use of the term "inquiry" has become more prevalent than ever. This radical turn from traditional content curriculum toward inquiry-based approaches to teaching raises issues about the promise and potential challenges of contemporary curriculum in K-12 L2 settings. This…

Context: Transnational emergent multilingual (TEM) adolescents are young people who maintain emotional, social, economic, and physical connections and networks to more than one country, often a home country and a host country. Because of their linguistic identities and varied schooling experiences, when they enroll in U.S. public schools, many are…

The infiltration of technology into our daily lives, which often combines multiple modes of learning, has expanded how we make meaning in language and literacy education. Although teachers and learners interact with multimodal texts for various purposes, in multiliterate research, few explorations have been conducted to examine teachers'…

This study is framed from a theoretical perspective that values the incorporation of reflection and multimodal products in service-learning that engage ELLs in "real-time" language learning. Using a pedagogical framework that is translingual and culturally sustaining, the author examines a community project in which the ELLs in a…

As a growing number of English language learners (ELLs) engage in digital and multimodal literacy practices in their daily lives, teachers are starting to incorporate multimodal approaches into their instruction. However, anecdotal and empirical evidence shows that teachers often feel unprepared for integrating such practices into their curricula…

Many observers have argued that minority language speakers often have difficulty with school-based literacy and that the poorer school achievement of such learners occurs at least partly as a result of these difficulties. At the same time, many have argued for a recognition of the multiple literacies required for citizens in a 21st century world.…

This article presents qualitative findings from a larger design-based research doctoral study in which I examined the impact of a curricular innovation to challenge the monolingual and monocultural norms of literacy practices and to be responsive to the linguistic and cultural landscape of 21st century classrooms. I collaborated with 11 university…

This article interrogates principles of ethnography in education proposed by Mills and Morton: raw tellings, analytic pattern, vignette and empathy. This article adopts a position that is uncomfortable, unconventional and interesting. It involves a deterritorialization/rupture of ethnography in education in order to reterritorialize a different…

The purpose of this article is to present one significant part of a large-scale critical-ethnographic-action-research project (CEAR Project) carried out in Oaxaca, Mexico. The overall CEAR Project has been conducted since 2007 in different Oaxacan elementary schools serving indigenous and mestizo (mixed-race) children. In the CEAR Project, teacher…

Guided by sociocultural theory and the theory of multiliteracies, learning is perceived as a shifting participation in practices, which is mediated by multiple physical and symbolic tools. Drawing on the situated multiliteracies approach, which integrates these two theories, the purpose of this ethnographic research is to examine the participation…

This article seeks to understand the role of drama pedagogy in second/additional language learning with data drawn from a school-based ethnographic study of English language learners taking a drama-English as a Second Language (ESL) course. Being aware that all drama teaching does not automatically lead into improvement in language learning, it…