For over a decade, standards-based education has been an integral part of the Office of Vocational and Adult Education's (OVAE) program of national leadership activities to improve the quality of adult education and literacy programs nationwide. The standards-based education movement in adult education has resulted in communicating clearer…

Students enter secondary classrooms armed with attributions for their own successes or failures, informed by experiences in and out of school, but it is unclear to what degree these attributions affect achievement. Additionally, while the influence teacher expectations can have on student achievement is well documented, students' perceptions of…

This ethnography seeks to identify the strengths that students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE), a unique subpopulation of English Language Learners (ELLs), possess and explore how those strengths may be utilized in the secondary classroom. This research aims to shift the focus from "eliminating deficits" to working…

Over the last four years, East Coast High (a pseudonym), a midsized high school on the East Coast, has failed to meet adequate yearly progress targets in reading as set forth by the Department of Education (DOE) in response to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Each year, many students at East Coast High entered the library and chose a book they…

The Conference on English Education (CEE) Executive Board authorizes the creation of commissions that focus on a particular area of interest of discussion and action for the field. Commissions meet at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention to plan and promote their activities aligned with English language arts teacher…

The social space this paper is concerned with is a particular school: it is local in that it ostensibly serves a local community in West London; however, it is global in that the student body is formed from families with connections all over the world. During an intensive period of 3 weeks, I observed a group of 12-year-olds in three classes:…

This is an interdisciplinary lesson designed for middle school students studying landforms and geological processes. Students create a two-dimensional topographic map from a three-dimensional landform that they create using clay. Students then use other groups' topographic maps to re-create landforms. Following this, students explore some basic…

Many of the literacies students possess go unnoticed or untapped in schools. In some cases, these hidden literacies are not seen or valued because they are not viewed as appropriate or relevant in relation to officially sanctioned, school-based literacies. The literature has shown that these hidden literacies are indeed valuable and relevant and…

This article discusses Al Souza's "Orlando City Maps," which was created not by adding colored ink to paper, but by cutting the printed paper away. Seven layers of pages are stacked upon one another and, except for the intact bottom layer, oval-shaped holes are cut through each page to reveal the layers below. When designing "Orlando City Maps,"…

In this paper, we employ quantitative and qualitative content analysis to investigate the nature of humanistic value content in the Chinese language arts curriculum and whether or not this varies across old and new versions of the textbooks. Our findings illustrate the various dimensions of humanistic value content in the Chinese language arts…

In this age of standardization, many English teachers are unsure about how to incorporate creative writing and thinking into their classroom. In a fresh new voice, Luke Reynolds emphasizes that "creativity in our lives as teachers and in the lives of our students is one of our most vital needs in the 21st century." Based on his own journey as an…

This paper examines how virtual worlds and other advanced social media can be married with problem-based learning to encourage creativity and critical thinking in the English/Language Arts classroom, particularly for middle school, high school, and undergraduate college education. Virtual world experiences such as "Second Life," Jumpstart.com, and…

In West Virginia one arts credit is required for graduation. This study examined whether participation in arts instruction beyond the one-credit minimum correlated with improved academic proficiency. Method of study: We studied a cohort of 14,653 public high school students who stayed at grade level during the 4-year period from 2007 through 2010.…

A middle school language arts teacher reflects on his experience in utilizing a school-housed online social network to create avenues for authentic audience, purpose, and response to student writing. With many technology proponents advocating a 21st century education, the fact that interacting with the Web 2.0 environment is essentially a reading…

Student engagement is a critical aspect of the learning process and a known predictor of school success. We report on an evaluation of a classroom intervention, CareerStart, designed to promote engagement through the use of career-relevant instruction whereby teachers use examples to tie the lesson material to knowledge and skills students can see…