This article explores the benefits and problems of teaching with challenged books in the English language arts classroom. Challenged books initiate important discussions and provide opportunities for students to explore diverse perspectives. Methods for helping teachers and schools prepare for potential challenges are also discussed. The authors…

Culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012) has emerged as an essential way to value the evolution of culture among diverse learners. Discussions around teaching in a culturally sustaining manner in the English language arts classroom, specifically when teaching literary analysis, often address the need to incorporate multicultural literature so…

Secondary English Language Arts classrooms are spaces where teachers can pursue justice through curricular, pedagogical, assessment, and discretionary decisions they make, using popular asset (i.e., cultural modeling, culturally responsive pedagogy) and justice pedagogies (i.e., critical literacies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, restorative…

Teaching topics on Indigenous people and culture can be challenging for educators in K-12 classrooms for a multitude of reasons. This dissertation examines the epistemological complexities that teaching Indigenous identity, cultural teachings, and futurities are met with in mainstream classrooms. In the early chapters, I spend time describing what…

Research shows many new college students may be remedial in English language arts or mathematics (Jaggers & Bickerstaff, 2018). For faculty in journalism and mass communication (JMC) fields, teaching struggling student writers can be especially challenging as these students may not have the fundamental knowledge to build applied writing skills…

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, educational systems worldwide have faced unprecedented challenges, particularly concerning the support of students based on traditional face-to-face instruction. This study focused on the concerns surrounding 2nd grade students at LEA and DRA, two urban elementary schools, who have faced multiple layers of…

This paper employs a mixed research methodology, integrating a questionnaire survey and sample interviews, to assess the current state of digital competence and identify the factors influencing it among international Chinese pre-service teachers. Building upon the authoritative model framework, this study developed a questionnaire on the digital…

The digital is inextricably woven across people's everyday lives and literacy practices, and English educators are tasked with preparing students to be critical, ethical, and agentic inventors and consumers of digital text. What has crystallized for English educators is an awareness that facilitating "digital discourse"--or the multiple…

This study examined a professional development (PD) intervention that provided kindergarten-through third-grade teachers with drama-based pedagogy to improve student reading achievement. The PD consisted of collaboration between teaching artists and teachers to integrate drama into English language arts instruction for a school year. Twenty-six…

This article explores how literary study engages readers' moral perception and imagination. Although some philosophers discuss reading as a largely solitary activity, this article explores social practices of reading common in English language arts classrooms in secondary schools. The article shows how reading with others can change the quality of…

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.,…

English language students often struggle to acquire and retain academic vocabulary due to limited exposure and insufficient opportunities for meaningful engagement with new words. Explicit, structured vocabulary instruction is essential to acquire word ownership, defined as understanding a word's meaning and using it in various contexts. This…

A sense of homeplace has always carried a "radical political dimension," as "one's homeplace was the one site where one could freely confront the issue of humanization, where one could resist" the greater society's efforts to Other and alienate. Such homeplaces, however tenuous and fragile, have often been created and kept by…

Awareness of vocabulary learning strategies has been identified as crucial in supporting learners' vocabulary development. Using interview data from 21 adolescent first language speakers of English identified as gifted students in the U.S. education context, I analysed the vocabulary learning strategies that they used to learn, remember, and make…

It is vital for educators to be aware of how traumatic experiences affect today's students, yet few teachers learn the tools needed to successfully teach these students. This book highlights how English Language Arts teachers, who are typically not licensed or specifically trained to work with trauma issues, can design and implement instruction…