Language and Literacy (Journal)
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Reading the World in the Word: The Possibilities for Literacy Instruction Framed Within Human Rights Education
No full textThe purpose of this critical ethnography (Madison, 2005; Noblit, Flores & Murrillo, 2004) was to investigate the experiences of teachers and students when literacy instruction was framed within human rights education. Informed by theories of cosmopolitan education (Beck, 2002; Beck & Szneider, 2010; Goldstein, 2007; Harper & Bean, 2009; Hull, 2010), critical socio-cultural theory (Moje & Lewis, 2007) and incorporating Freirean concepts of critical literacy and praxis, this study details the experiences of two servant leader interns (teachers) and sixteen scholars (students) participating in human rights education within the context of a Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School
Metaphors We Teach By: Examining Teacher Conceptualizations of Literacy in the English Language Arts Classroom
No full textThis case study used metaphor analysis to gain insight on the conceptualizations of literacy informing six English Language Arts educators’ understanding of the meaning and goals of U.S. literacy education today. While findings indicated literacy’s functional aspect as the most prominent metaphoric conceptualization employed, the teachers’ use of alternate metaphors to highlight the value of literacy learning beyond its pragmatic outcomes suggests that U.S. literacy education reform may be out of step with the pedagogical goals teachers have for their students. The article concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications suggested by the study findings
Finding Wisdom in Practice: The Genesis of the Salty Chip, A Canadian Multiliteracies Collaborative
No full textUsing a narrative approach of ‘scenario building’, this paper documents the author’s quest to find her own wisdom in her professional practice and considers that quest in light of recent theorizing in the area of New Literacies research. Through the telling of four critical incidents and a subsequent analysis drawing on theories of cultural studies, critical literacy, critical pedagogy and critical disabilities studies, the author explores the process that led to the development of the Salty Chip: A Canadian Multiliteracies Collaborative. The network challenges outdated institutional frameworks that privilege developmentalism and practices rooted in intellectual measurement and standardization, and considers how new forms of participation that include digital spaces mediate our evolving subjectivities and cultural practices
Processing Factors, Academic Discourse, and Local and Global Comprehension
No full textThe relationship among processing factors and the comprehension of literary and scientific discourses of fourth grade readers was examined. With one exception, a different matrix of processing behaviors were associated with the recall within the two disciplinary discourses. However, clauses read in a manner than maintained the author’s meaning, regardless of the existence of miscues, were positively correlated with local and global levels of comprehension on both discourse types. Interestingly, words read per minute, accuracy, reading levels as determined by the Qualitative Reading Inventory, and oral reading fluency as determined by DIBELS were unrelated to strong retellings
Teaching composition with new literacies perspectives: “We’ll test it out and then let the kids run with it.”
No full textWe report on two studies of teaching composition in Canadian elementary and middle-level classrooms, focusing this paper on teachers who work with new literacies perspectives. A study of 21 teachers in all 10 Canadian provinces provided evidence of a broad range of practices in composition instruction, and an ongoing action research study with two groups of teachers allows us to develop richer understandings of the ways in which teachers create curriculum with students to promote engaged and productive multimodal and digital composing practices. Nine themes are discussed within two broad categories: administrative and organizational issues, and teachers’ stances and views of selves as learners and collaborators
Dialogic Encounters with Early Readers through Mediated Think-Alouds: Constructing the Transactional Zone
No full textIn this article, we explore the processes in which four young readers make meanings through dialogic encounters with an interviewer utilizing the think-aloud as a mediator. We believe that these mediated think-alouds act as both a mediating tool to help effect change in cognition through what Swain (2006b) and others have called “languaging” (the process of verbalizing one’s thoughts aloud either by oneself or with others), and a research elicitation tool which in its nominal function analyzing how students talk about texts serves to implicate the interviewer/researcher in the process of co-constructing new texts with the reader as the source of meaning in the reading passages. In soliciting information about these four readers’ problem-solving strategies on reading comprehension questions, the interviewer employed a dialogical and sociocultural model (Bakhtin, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978, 1986) that framed the interactions as a co-constructed reading event (Maybin & Moss, 1993). Using a Vygotskian sociocultural perspective, we analyze selected extracts of verbal accounts of these elementary school students who were assigned a reading task in the attempt to answer the question: What particular meanings emerged and how were they constructed by the students and the interviewer in their generating of next texts in the process of reading
Enhancing and Displacing Literacy Practices: Examining Student Publishing in a Fifth Grade Writer’s Workshop
No full textPublication of student work has been considered a mainstay of the writer’s workshop since the early days of the ‘children as authors’ movement (Graves, 1983). However, this philosophy, which stipulates students should share their work with peers, may not be one that always benefits students. This case study utilizes the concept of literacy-in-action (Brandt & Clinton, 2002), to look at the manner in which one local rendition of writer’s workshop both enhanced and displaced student literacy practices. The guiding question asks: How are focal students, Sara, Ally and Nigel, engaging in the practice of publication of their writing and how are those publications, as literacy objects, mediating their practice of literacy in the writer’s workshop? The examination of writer’s workshop first presents the way publication of student writing found its way into Sara and Nigel’s classroom and the kinds of investments accumulated in it as it made its way into their practice of classroom writing. It then presents the agentful activity engaged in by these students in their classroom literacy practice of writing for publication. Through the analysis, the ways an assessment-focused writer’s workshop worked to enhance and displace individual student’s literacy practices are brought out
Second Language Learners Making Video in Three Contexts
No full textWe describe videomaking projects in Canada, India, and Mexico in which second language learners were asked to show the children in the other countries what their lives were like. We consider how this form of expression might contribute to second language learning and allow children to make use of in and out-of-school resources. We also raise questions about the affordances and constraints of the videomaking process and explore how teachers might approach such multimodal literacy activities with children
The Constancy of the School "Canon": A Survey of Texts Used in Grade 10 English Language Arts in 2006 and 1996
No full textThis article reports on a 2006 survey of texts used in Grade 10 English language arts classes in Edmonton, Alberta. The survey uses the same instrument as a previous 1996 survey and provides comparative data from a section of the same pool as participated in 1996. In terms of the most popular titles, there has been very little change during that decade. To Kill a Mockingbird and Romeo and Juliet continue to be the most widely taught texts by a considerable margin. Texts taught in only one class show more variability. Reasons for the striking constancy of the title list are considered
Freedoms In the Classroom: Cultivating a Successful Third Space for Literacy Growth
No full textThis phenomenologically-based, action research study looked at themes across the interviews of college students after they participated in the Digital Reading Log (DRL); a literacy-based activity utilizing the Internet, word processing software and email. The purpose of this study was to investigate students’ experiences in the basic skills reading classroom while engaged with the DRL. Findings indicate that the DRL afforded the students various freedoms, such as freedom of language and choice. The data suggested that the instructor was able to draw upon these freedoms to effectively create a Third Space that improved struggling young adult readers’ understanding of text while increasing their motivation to read