Although authors often create literary texts in order to comment on issues of personhood and human relationships, reading and writing about literary texts in schools is often focused on close analysis of literary elements or exploration of one's own experience with the text. Thus, students' written arguments about literature typically do little…

Given the complexity of dialogic argumentative writing and the requisite instruction needed to support student writers, we describe the instructional practices of an English language arts teacher and her culturally and linguistically diverse classroom of 10th graders' writing during key moments in two instructional units during school year…

Purpose: By engaging levels of W/writerliness, this paper aims to identify how English Language Arts teachers' personal and professional W/writerly identities impact their performance of pedagogical agency. Design/methodology/approach: In this narrative inquiry, the author draws on theories of writing identity and agency to analyze how four…

In the English classroom, narrative writing is often separated from the work of reading literature or used merely to coax reluctant students into discussing textually relevant topics. This article discusses a close writing activity, Image Explosion, that engages students in narrative writing that brings attention to the smallest details of…

This study investigates how young elementary children engage with conceptions of gender in connection to video gameplay in the language arts classroom. During a three-week unit on video game literacies in a multiage lab school, children learned about, played, discussed, and wrote about video games. Student writing, game reviews, and literature…

This qualitative, multi-site case study examines two cases focusing on the dialogic relations of secondary English students and their teachers, as they interact with print and non-print pop culture texts related to sports and/or music as part of a curriculum unit on a politically sensitive topic. The purpose of this inquiry is to examine…

Along with a global mobility of NNESTs around the world (Canagarajah, 1999), there has been an expanding population of NNEST trainees in the U.S. higher education institutions (Park, 2012). This brought an assumption that there will be an increasing number of international college composition teachers in the U.S. college contexts (Ruecker et al.,…

Abstract concepts, such as gravity, may provide the perfect opportunity to bring phenomena into the classroom. As a knowledge generation strategy, summarizing can foster that opportunity. Using phenomena and summary writing together might help student learning since it requires making connections between their ideas and words to explain the…

In this article, the authors introduce ways to use disciplinary literacy (DL) instructional strategies to foster civic engagement and reasoning for middle-grade multilingual students. Four phases of DL strategies--"framing," "reading," "discussion," and "writing"--are illustrated with examples from an…

Argumentative writing has long been considered an essential skill for disciplinary learning. For researchers and curriculum developers to develop ecologically valid instructional approaches to argumentative writing, a pivotal prerequisite is the understanding of how teachers use various instructional methods in tandem to teach different…

Frameworks that connect to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in Social Studies, such as the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies States Standards, highlight the need to engage in inquiry-based instruction (NCSS, 2013). Participation in such inquiry requires students to engage in…

Preservice teachers' (PSTs) writing attitudes have been well formed through countless positive and negative interactions by the time they enter higher education. The present study examined 17 PSTs' beliefs about teaching writing, confidence levels, and plans for future instruction, before and after a semester-long language arts methods course.…

"Drawing Conclusions" explores the use of juxtaposed visual representations (JVRs) to help preservice teachers grapple with abstract concepts, theories, or complex controversies in education. Acting as both a learning tool and an intellectual spark, JVRs are two simple contrasted sketches that students produce on a divided sheet of…

The purpose of this dissertation study is to examine the ways underprivileged fifth-grade students enacted digital multimodal composing practices and enhanced their understanding of digital multimodal composing in activity systems of ELA and science classes in a public school. This study was conducted within one fifth-grade classroom at McGrove…

In this article, the authors share what they learned from their study of writing communities, which they refer to as writing groups, during the 2017-18 school year. The authors propose a conceptual framework for writing groups that engages students in the process of designing and participating as writers with their peers. The framework emphasizes…