In this paper, the authors present findings from a yearlong ethnographic research study that examines the development of critical literacy within two urban fourth grade classrooms in Tennessee. This study examines how young second language learners in English-dominant classrooms learn to read critically, write, and construct multimodal…

In this paper, we identify how and why digital media production can contribute to the active participation of children in education and also consider how much of the existing work in this area is framed as a "miraculous" answer to educational challenges without critical interrogation of either the process or product. To begin, we…

Digital technologies are increasingly implemented in Swedish schools, which impact on education in the contemporary classroom. Screen-based practice opens up for new forms and multiplicity of representations, taking into account that language in a globalized society is more than reading and writing skills. This paper presents a case study of…

This article investigates the reading practices of 45 EFL Yemeni students using the "learning by design" framework. The framework organizes the teaching and learning of literacy into four processes: experiencing, conceptualising, analysing, and applying. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect data on a sample of…

Within an era of change to early childhood education and care, this case study of kindergarten classroom literacy curricula sought to understand the production and effects of the curriculum within one urban, Canadian full-day kindergarten that included culturally and linguistically diverse children. Central was a concern for the place of…

Donna E. Alvermann, Distinguished Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia in Athens, received recognitions and honors as a scholar/leader in adolescent literacy. Her thoughts about contexts for literacy learning challenge that the divide between in- and out-of-school literacy learning is real and needs…

Information literacy, 40 years since the term was coined, remains a conceptually contested aspect of library and information science research. This paper uses a review of the literature related to the concept of information literacy to identify three different perspectives, their historical origins, and connection to library and information…

A very successful preschool project the author did at Ohio State University's Schoenbaum Family Center combined students' interest in storytelling, drama, and multiple literacies. For this particular project, a classic children's fairy tale was used, though the project is easily adaptable for other stories, texts, content, and age levels. In this…

The article draws on work in Critical Geography Studies and Photovoice methodology, to illustrate the ways in which youth in an inner city conceptualize neighborhoods and public spaces. We utilize youth's photographs, narratives, and maps to tell a story of youth's lived experiences and argue that these experiences are vital sources of knowledge…

This article presents the findings of a field experiment in medical English with first-year medical students at the University of Pavia, Northern Italy. Working in groups of 8-10, the students were asked to produce a corpus of medical texts in English demonstrating how the human body is itself a meaningful text (Baldry and Thibault 2006: Ch. 1).…

This article explores language ideologies and language uses in a multilingual university in Hong Kong by exploring the voices and experiences of both mainland Chinese and Hong Kong students. Drawing on the notions of language ideologies, separate multilingualism, and translanguaging, the research illustrates how students' linguistic ideologies are…

This paper describes how the pedagogy of multiliteracies was piloted in a language arts curriculum for high-ability adolescent students. Specifically, it delineates the pedagogical intervention that was needed for its implementation within the formal language arts curriculum. Drawing on ethnographic research in two classes of 14-year-old students…

Literature holds the potential to significantly influence the lives of readers, but what is the nature of this influence for very young readers? This study investigated the question: What are the relationships between beginning readers and their personal literature? A first grade class of 18 students individually assembled a collection of personal…

Prior scholarship suggests that many boys are disengaged from school-based literacy because they do not see its value or significance in their lives. In response, this study investigates the role of popular culture and new literacies in motivating adolescent boys within secondary English. Drawing on sociocultural approaches to literacy research,…

This study explores teachers' reflections on their learning to compose with new technologies in the context of teacher education and/or teacher professional development. English language arts (ELA) teachers (n = 240) in 15 courses learned to use digital video (DV), completed at least one DV group project, and responded to open-ended survey…