Digital Commons Network^™

Apprenticing Towards Deeper Learning In The Ela Classroom: Using Young Adult Literature To Support Students’ Mastery, Identity, And Creativity, Julianna Kershen, Kacy M. Price, Nynke Wimp, Evie Jackson, Kaitlin Rogers

Virginia English Journal

This practitioner focused article highlights the perspectives of pre-service teachers and undergraduate researchers investigating the kinds of learning interactions and instructional decisions that result in deeper learning outcomes for high school students. Deeper learning outcomes are often described as 21^st century skills, including mastery learning, support of holistic and scholarly student identities, and the ability to engage collaboratively with critical and creative problem-solving skills. The authors suggest a series of young adult literature texts that can serve as springboards into project-based learning opportunities that provide authentic and real world-connected activities, iterative cycles of learning, peer-peer collaboration, and in-depth disciplinary …

Bank Street School For Children’S Story Of Integrating Structured Phonics Into A Progressive Literacy Approach, Melanie Bryon, Douglas R. Knecht, Emily Linsay, Emily Schottland

Occasional Paper Series

This article explores how the Bank Street School for Children (SFC), a historically progressive institution rooted in child-centered, experiential learning, has successfully integrated structured phonics into its literacy program. Traditionally focused on whole language practices, SFC recognized inconsistencies in student reading outcomes and, beginning in 2017 undertook a multi-year evaluation of its literacy approach. Guided by the core values of child development and equity, and research in cognitive science, the school adopted a research-based phonics program, implementing it across Kindergarten through fourth grade over multiple years. This shift aimed to ensure all students—not just those with strong language backgrounds—gain the …

Lessons From The Field On The Science Of Reading: School And Classroom Stories Across Contexts

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

“It Was Hard, But It Worked:” Children’S Theories Of Learning To Read, Cristina Valencia Mazzanti, Laura Tiktin-Sharick, Madeleine Zuck, Tiphareth Ananda

Occasional Paper Series

In this paper we come together as teachers, a school leader and a professor to examine children’s theories of learning to read captured in written and illustrated texts created by 143 children currently enrolled in kindergarten to sixth grade. This collection of children’s theories of reading was created in the context of a progressive elementary school located at Smith College, a women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts. Our hope in examining children’s theories is to humanize and historicize current debates about how reading is taught. We also hope to offer a counter narrative to the dichotomies currently shaping reading education, …

Thinking Narratively About Science Of Reading Forces, Moral Injury, And Teacherhood, Kyle C. Arlington

Occasional Paper Series

Stories of teachers’ classroom lives shape the public imagination of what it means to be a “good teacher,” yet these narratives are always partial, contextual, and entangled with broader cultural and institutional forces. This research essay narratively explores the experiences of Lisa, a veteran literacy teacher navigating Science of Reading (SoR) mandates in her elementary classroom. It examines how her identities, values, and visions for literacy teaching intersect with the discursive, material, and affective dynamics that shape how SoR unfolds in the context of Lisa’s classroom life. (Re)storying her experiences draws attention to the emotional toll and moral dissonance teachers …

All Flourishing Is Mutual: Cultivating A Gift Economy Of Literacy, Lindsey Lush, Melissa Kurtz

Occasional Paper Series

In this paper, two scholars and practicing elementary educators argue that the policies and practices of the Science of Reading (SoR) movement in early literacy education are being constructed with the logic of a market economy, shaped by neoliberal ideologies of individualism, scarcity, and competition. Compelled by our concerns for the bodies and beings of readers and reading teachers in the context of our Northeast Georgia public elementary school and provoked by our shared engagement with The Serviceberry, Indigenous scientist and scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book on lessons from the natural world, we engage a postqualitative approach to emergent, relational …

When Science Of Reading Policy Meets Classroom Reality: The Nonsense Word Problem, Lisa Dewing-Birno, Luis Lopez

Occasional Paper Series

A central feature of many Science of Reading (SoR)-aligned curricula is the use of nonsense words in early literacy assessment to measure a student's ability to decode unfamiliar words using knowledge of letter-sound correspondences. However, the research base for using nonsense words as an instructional tool is much weaker and more contested. Through two narratives, we illustrate how the implementation of SoR instruction with nonsense words can be particularly problematic. We argue that effective literacy instruction demands what we call pedagogical clarity, the ability to integrate pedagogical practices with deep understanding of individual learners, their cultural and linguistic resources, and …

La Gran Historia De Dilly Meets The Science Of Reading: A Cuento Of Scripts, Skills, And Silenced Selves, Elenita Irizarry Ramos, Ysaaca D. Axelrod

Occasional Paper Series

This article offers a deep dive into two lessons of a structured literacy curriculum to interrogate how current SoR–aligned mandates materialize in a Spanish dual-language first-grade classroom. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and Curriculum as a Discourse as both our conceptual frame and analytical method, we examine (a) La gran historia de Dilly—a retelling of The Ugly Duckling translated into Spanish—and (b) the teacher-facing lesson plan supplied by a major commercial publisher. Four patterns emerged: (1) reading is reduced to quantifiable skills (Lexile badges, sight-word drills) while the tale naturalizes biologically ‘correct’ identities, erasing hybrid selves; (2) scripted directives recast teachers …

Uplifting The Legacy Of Black Teachers: Loving And Liberatory Pedagogies In A Science Of Reading Context, Natasha A. Thornton, Amanda L. Armstrong, Brooke Blacknall, Jordan Freeman, Elaine Nevers-Williams, Mukkaramah Smith

Occasional Paper Series

This article explores Black liberatory pedagogy (BLP) as a critical approach to navigating current Science of Reading (SoR) mandates, which are often restrictive and fail to honor the literacies and linguistic practices of Black children. Through the narratives of six educators—classroom teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher educators—the article examines how they have experienced and responded to the implementation of SoR standards and curriculum shifts. These stories also illuminate what becomes possible when teachers are in spaces that allow for autonomy, imagination, and culturally responsive pedagogy. The educators’ experiences, expertise, and cultural wisdom are centered, demonstrating how they enact BLP through …

Lessons From The Field On The Science Of Reading: An Introduction, Gail Boldt, Patricia Enciso

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Language Choices On Tanzanian Instagram, Carolyne Ulomy

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

This study examines multilingual practices on Instagram within Tanzania’s rapidly growing computer-mediated communication (CMC) landscape. Using a qualitative corpus-based approach, I analyzed 400 Instagram posts from 40 users and conducted five techno-biographical interviews to explore what shapes language choice and how it relates to content. Findings show that Tanzanian Instagram users draw on Swahili, English, Swanglish/Kiswanglish, Community Languages (CLs) and Foreign Languages (FLs) to communicate and construct online identities. Interview data indicate that language choice is influenced by the intended audience, post content, brand image, language accessibility, the original language of the material and relationships between interlocutors. Corpus patterns further …

“Das Muttermal” - “The Birthmark” - “דער מוטער־צײכן”, Kristin K. Mlay-Kuhns

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

“Das Muttermal / The Birthmark / דער מוטער־צײכן” is a trilingual work of transcreative poetry that stages translation as a method of mourning, cultural memory, and feminist inheritance. Composed first in German and then translated into English and Yiddish, the poem explores the catastrophic rupture of maternal loss and the slow transformation of trauma into understanding. The central metaphor of the birthmark—Muttermal, the “mother-mark”—figures the maternal body as both wound and connective tissue, binding ancestors and descendants through a physical trace that persists across generations, geographies, and languages. Formally, the project demonstrates how translation unveils the layered meanings embedded in …

When The Metamorphosis Turns White: Kafka Reimagined In Igoni Barrett’S Blackass, Bisola J. Ajibade

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Igoni Barrett’s Blackass (2015) has frequently been described as a “race-rewrite” of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915). This framing has shaped much of the critical conversation surrounding the two texts. While these approaches productively illuminate questions of identity and biopolitics, less attention has been paid to situating both texts across the intersecting contexts of German modernism and Nigerian postcolonial literature. This article provides a close comparative reading of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Igoni Barrett’s Blackass in order to examine how Kafkaesque elements are reconfigured within a contemporary postcolonial Nigerian context. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of minor literature, alongside …

Immigration And Policy: Who Influences Who?, Madison May Albers

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

This project examines how public opinion on immigration changes in response to the framing of major immigration policies in the United States. The study is grounded in Policy feedback theory, which argues that shifts in public opinion reflect the dominant frames of policy. The independent variable is the framing of the legislation, measured by presidential State of the Union addresses, and the dependent variable is the public's sentiments on immigration, measured by the media's portrayal. Utilizing a qualitative comparative historical design, the project analyzes the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, DACA in 2012, the Trump travel …

The Daily Gamecock: April 2026, University Of South Carolina, Office Of Student Media

2026

No abstract provided.

Bookmarked Volume 5 - April 2026, Elizabeth Batte, University Of Mississippi Libraries

Bookmarked

A newsletter curated by University of Mississippi Librarians. Featured stories: "Giving Day 2026," "Eudora Welty Donation," "Archival Journeys," "Library Data Skills," and student spotlights.

The Future Of Dual Immersion In California: Analyzing California’S Global 2030 Goals, Jonathan Tejeda, Kamila Campos, Robert Emmans

School of Public Policy Capstones

California's Global 2030 initiative set an ambitious target: half of all K-12 students to achieve bilingual proficiency by 2030. This qualitative study examines whether Dual Language programs (DLPs) in California's major metropolitan areas are positioned to meet that goal. Drawing on ten semi-structured expert interviews with researchers, administrators, teachers, and nonprofit advocates, the study identifies four central challenges: inadequate student preparedness, chronic underfunding, insufficient teacher training, and a failure to connect students to their cultural heritage. The findings reveal that California lacks the infrastructure, data systems, and financial commitment necessary to achieve the 2030 goals. The authors recommend establishing a …

Urban And Suburban Teachers’ Perceptions Of Burnout In The Post-Covid19 Era: A Mixed Methods Dissertation In Education, Dylan Rossin

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

The Covid-19 pandemic fundamentally altered the professional demands placed on K–12 teachers, intensifying concerns related to occupational burnout. This mixed-methods study examined urban and suburban public school teachers’ perceptions of burnout in the post–Covid-19 era, with particular attention to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Grounded in Maslach’s theory of burnout, the study sought to determine whether differences existed between urban and suburban teachers’ burnout experiences and to explore educators’ perspectives on factors contributing to burnout following the pandemic.

Participants included full-time public K–12 teachers in Pennsylvania with a minimum of three years of teaching experience. Quantitative data were collected …

English By Any Other Variety, Leya Shekanena

Masters Projects

African American Language (AAL) is a variety of English that is commonly used and linguistically respected, yet its application is barred from writing courses in higher education. Because AAL’s academic stigmatization negatively impacts the students who utilize AAL, it is important to discover how accepted usage influences students’ understanding of collegiate academic writing and their own identity. To engage with this complex problem, this project integrates Culturally Relevant Teaching and Black Linguistic Justice frameworks with the andragogical method of experiential learning to create a Supplemental Writing Skills college course. The purpose of this course is to explore how encouraged usage …

Exploring Perspectives Of Autistic Individuals And Caregivers On Autism Inclusive Services In Public Libraries, Ayva J. Rose

LSU Master's Theses

Public libraries are increasingly recognized as important community hubs designed to promote literacy, learning, language, family engagement, and inclusivity. Despite this, autistic individuals may experience language, literacy, sensory, and social differences that could impact their ability to participate in literacy-based programming in libraries. Librarians currently report a desire to provide services that not only include but meaningfully support autistic children in their families; however, little research has examined how key stakeholders within the autism community perceive autism-inclusive programming within libraries. This research seeks to explore these perspectives and identify (1) perceived barriers to attending children’s library programs, (2) accommodations and …

Employing The Question-Answer Relationships Technique To Enhance The Comprehension Of Maharah Qiraah Students

Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora

Fifth-grade students at MI Bahrul Ulum Tambakberas Jombang showed low comprehension in Arabic reading, including difficulty identifying main ideas, making conclusions, and retelling narratives in their own language. This study investigated the use of the Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) method to improve reading comprehension. Using a quantitative experimental approach with purposive sampling in classes V-A and V-B, the analysis included descriptive statistics, normality, homogeneity, and hypothesis testing. The findings show a marked improvement in the experimental class after the QAR intervention, including better post-test scores, stronger ability to draw conclusions, interpret difficult words, and explain values in the readings. The experimental …

Listening-Based Communicative Instructional Approach At The Indonesian Gigantic Immersive Environment, Widya Rizky Pratiwi

Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora

Creative innovation in teaching critically influences students' success. This paper investigates teachers' teaching methods in an Indonesian gigantic English immersive environment. The qualitative study, which involved eight participants, was conducted in a 'let's speak class' at Mr. Pepsi Upgrade, Kampung Inggris Pare, Kediri. Data were gained from classroom observation, interviews, photos, and documents. They were analyzed in six stages, from preparing the data to interpreting the description meaning. Findings promote that teachers teach using technology, like a listening-based communicative instructional approach (L-CIA mode). Six phases were trained, from giving ice breaking to singing together. It stimulates the students' speaking skills.

Students’ Perception And Acceptance Of Using Padlet As A Digital Tool For English Writing Skills, Suparmi Suparmi

Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora

This study aims at investigating the students’ perception and acceptance of using Padlet in learning English writing. A total of 70 students taking the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course at a state university in Indonesia were involved in the study. They were asked to fill out a questionnaire and 10 of them were interviewed to determine whether the students’ perception and acceptance of the use of Padlet for learning English writing as they stated in the questionnaire. The results indicated that the majority of the students had a positive perception and accepted the usage of Padlet facilitated their writing …

Environmental Factors In The Production Of Code-Switching In Pre-School Children: A Case Study Of Three Indonesian Children

Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora

The study investigates code-switching performed by three pre-school children in Indonesia. The study employs a qualitative research methodology with an exploratory case study. The participants of the study are three pre-school children who live in a small village in Banten Province in which two languages are exposed and spoken by the majority of people in that area namely Bahasa Indonesia as the national language and Sundanese as a vernacular language. The study reveals that the code-switching utterances performed by preschool children are classified into intra and inter sentential switches.

Video-Based Mobile Learning In Efl's Writing, Imelda Imelda

Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora

The development of ICT has been recognized as an important aspect in today's EFL classroom. Due to the low achievement of Indonesian EFL's writing, video-based mobile learning is believed to be able to enhance the students writing skill. The flexibility and the practicality of mobile learning through video project offer a solution to English teachers in facilitating the students' language learning and fostering the students' engagement in authentic - real life context at their interests. This paper aims at presenting the literature review on the benefits of video-based mobile learning and its implementation in EFL's writing.

Pre-Experiential Constraint Reconstruction: A Structural Account Of The Prior Layer In Dialogue With Jung, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

Experiences commonly described as pre-experiential memory—such as immediate recognition, familiarity without prior exposure, and the sense of "already knowing"—are typically interpreted as the retrieval of stored content. However, this storage-based account does not provide a structurally consistent explanation of how such content is preserved prior to experience or reactivated in a form that aligns with present input.

This paper extends the three-layer cognitive architecture developed in prior work in this series (Poe, 2026n), in which cognition operates across Core processing, Modulation, and an operationally inaccessible Prior layer that supplies constraints to all processing.

This paper proposes an alternative account in …

2025-2026 Woodwind Department Recital, Betania Canas, Mia Cotton, Ay Kawasaki, Aj Meyer, Daniel Cruz, Amanda Rearden, Karen Trujillo, Rishi Gurnani, Chase Hogan, Juanita Jaimes, Noah Suarez, Nicholas Weathers, Jacob Lomboy, Derek Lund, Ethan Thompson, Ziling Wang

Studio Recitals

No abstract provided.

Digital Touchpoints: Investigating Contact Page Accessibility And Visual Authenticity Within Medical Tourism Health Websites, Alicia Mason, Elizabeth Spencer, Kristen Livingston, Treyton Meyers, Sakshi Bhati, Himika Akram

Faculty Submissions

This study examines two critical digital touchpoints on medical tourism provider (MTP) websites: (1) the accessibility of contact pages which often function as entry points for inquiries, scheduling, and pre-travel coordination, and (2) the authenticity of visual imagery used to shape expectations about care environments, personnel, and technological capacity. A sample of 105 MTPs across all six World Health Organization regions were analyzed using quantitative web accessibility testing and qualitative visual analysis. Results indicate pervasive accessibility errors on contact-page touchpoints and extensive reliance on inauthentic imagery to depict patients, providers, and medical technologies. Together, these practices may distort user expectations …

Should Judicial Opinions Be Read Like Statutes?, Margaret H. Lemos

Northwestern University Law Review

Should judicial opinions be interpreted with an eye to their purpose, context, or the intent of their authors, or should interpreters focus on the ordinary meaning of the text? Opinions present the same sorts of interpretive puzzles as other legal texts, and yet they have been omitted from the debates over interpretive methodology that dominate the fields of constitutional and statutory interpretation. The omission is no accident: the Supreme Court has stated repeatedly—and with increasing frequency in recent years—that judicial opinions are not to be read like statutes. Yet neither courts nor commentators have explained why the principles that ground …

Place Names And Presidential Control, Austin Kruse

Northwestern University Law Review

Since the start of his second term, President Trump has issued executive orders at an extraordinary pace, using them to advance a broader ideological agenda across the administrative state. While scholarly attention has largely focused on the most sweeping of these directives, less prominent orders raise similar concerns about the reach of presidential power. This Note examines one such order: Executive Order 14,172, which directs the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali and expands presidential influence over the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN).

Although geographic naming is ostensibly apolitical, place names are deeply entangled with questions of …