This paper reports on research which has explored essential requirements for pedagogies of hope, including the expansion of teachers' semiotic knowledge. The study, a professional learning intervention with teachers of young multilingual learners engaged in science inquiry, was informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) descriptions of…

This article provides an overview of how digital stories (DSs)--storylines that integrate text, images, and sound--have been used in second-language (L2) contexts. The article first reviews the methodical and planned, albeit non-linear, steps required for successful implementation of DSs in the L2 classroom and then assesses the observed…

This article presents and describes how we have used notions and structures informed by complexity thinking to shape new descriptions and approaches to understanding "new literacy" practices with young learners. Using data from two studies: a two year project working with kindergarten children using drama and digital tools to develop…

Faced with repression and reform, humor has become tactical for public school teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, engaged in a decades-old movement that after 2006 involved intensified street- and school-based pedagogies. This piece explores how humor adds to a political project via mocking names, images, and dictates of elite leaders to bring a here and…

My goal in this paper is to contribute to the process of bringing practice and theory into active dialogue. Initially, I review some early instructional examples of crosslinguistic pedagogy involving emergent bilingual students. I then focus on more recent examples from the Canadian context that illustrate the emerging role of classroom teachers…

Many immigrants and refugees in the United States must confront different linguistic and cultural contexts in their everyday life. As part of a larger ethnographic study related to refugee families and literacy, this qualitative study explores how adult English as a second language (ESL) students help their classmate Htoo Eh find ways to deal with…

This report follows up on the book "Leapfrogging Inequality: Remaking Education to Help Young People Thrive," published in 2018 by the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution. The book argued the importance of education leapfrogging--creating transformative shifts rather than incremental evolution by harnessing…

This article charts the development of three literacy research frameworks: multiliteracies, new literacies, and popular literacies. By reviewing the literature surrounding three current conceptions of literacy, an attempt is made to form an integrative grouping that captures the most relevant elements of each for learning environments design.…

This case study of a grade six classroom literacy curriculum in Ontario, Canada was designed to produce new knowledge of how curricula can promote multimodal literacy learning opportunities for students. With a focus on constraints and enablers, the study found few opportunities for multimodal literacy learning due to standardised assessments, an…

Critical media literacies can help nurture students' creative agencies and engender positive, sustained change in local communities. Although students do need to develop faculties with digital technologies, they must also participate in critical readings of cultural artifacts and discriminate between various multimedia sources. It is important for…

In the context of the Northwest Arkansas (NWA) regional setting, this study examines the effects of the Spanish for Heritage and Native Speakers (SHNS) model from multiple vantage points. Educational capital and biculturation approaches are employed to help theoretically frame post-secondary educational success and ethnic identity, respectively.…

The digital technology era has profoundly evolved and changed the ways that people consume and produce information. As language itself is recognized as a multimodal resource for communicative purposes, different forms of multimodality have been advocated to nurture students' multiliteracies in educational contexts. This study aims to investigate…

This study examined adolescents' perspectives on their multimodal composing goals and designs when creating digital projects in the context of an English Language Arts class. Sociocultural and social semiotics theoretical frameworks were integrated to understand six 12th grade students' viewpoints when composing three multimodal products--a…

The current qualitative study addresses the growing concern in preservice teacher (PT) education that simply increasing the amount of field experiences in teacher preparation programs may just reinforce the status quo in teaching. The focus in this report is on how a series of literacy tutorials, designed as hybrid spaces for learning, provide…

This is one of two papers developed for an Ministry of Education funded project, Competencies in New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZC). This paper draws on archived policy discussion papers to document the provenance of the key competencies included in the "New Zealand Curriculum" ("NZC"). The second paper analyses…