Education Commons^™

Young Citizens Of The World Unite! A Case For The Model United Nations In Middle School Classrooms, Stacie K. Pettit, Craig D. Albert, Juan Walker, Laura Rychly

Middle Grades Review

In this manuscript, the authors describe the benefits and theoretical connections the Junior Model United Nations (JMUN) program has with middle school classrooms. The lens used to view the JMUN program is informed by literature on the needs of young adolescents, inquiry learning, and global citizenship. Findings from this literature illuminate nuances in the interaction between inquiry learning through the C3 Framework and active learning participation. Implications for middle school students, in-service teachers, and teacher candidates are discussed.

Exploring Teacher Candidates’ Civic Efficacy Through Civic Engagement And Critical Literacy In A Literacy Methods Course, Dana M. Karraker

Theses and Dissertations

Public school spaces play a large role in developing people’s understandings of civic knowledge and responsibility. Teachers, administrators, and policy-makers design school curriculum to reflect the types of citizens they believe a society needs, and thus, determines approaches to teaching and curriculum development (Labaree, 1997). This action research study examined the civic efficacy and critical literacy understandings of seven elementary education teacher candidates enrolled in a content area literacy course. The course and the study were designed using a critical literacy and civic efficacy framework as literacy practices are closely connected to the ways in which people are able to …

Measuring The Effectiveness Of Critical Literacy As An Instructional Method, Edward Lehner, Kaemanje Thomas, Jean Shaddai, Toni Hernen

Publications and Research

This paper reports the results of a quasi-experiment investigating the efficacy of using critical literacy as an instructional method. Using a quantitative comparison method, critical literacy is the study’s treatment. The treatment measures the final exam scores of linguistically diverse urban community college students enrolled in college developmental reading courses against 13 other statistically similar classes. The primary data are the results of a standardized final exam. This quasi-experimental study demonstrates the effectiveness of a critical literacy model when employed in a community college setting. Further, this study introduces a quantitative rationale for using critical literacy and establishes the practice …

Using Multiple Texts To Teach Critical Reading Skills To Linguistically Diverse Students, Kaemanje Thomas, Minkyug Choi

Publications and Research

Mastery of developmental reading courses offers both an opportunity for academic enrichment and a barrier to college completion. We examine what it means to use multiple texts in college developmental reading courses, the benefits of using them, and considerations that instructors may employ in their instructions. A review of the literature indicates Linguistically Diverse students often lack the required critical thinking skills needed to tackle the rigor and demand of their college level courses. We conducted a study to tests whether using multiple texts improved LDs critical reading skills. Participants of 30 undergraduate students taking RDL 500 course were analyzed …

(Re)Storying Ferguson: Youth Voices And Literate Lives, Katherine O'Daniels

Dissertations

This dissertation reports on a collaborative action research study conducted with Sioux Roslawski, a third-grade teacher in a Ferguson, Missouri elementary school. Sioux and I wondered how students might use words, images, and actions to shape a vision of their community space and its future in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting. Situated within a critical-spatial and sociocultural paradigm, placemaking stems from understandings of place as culturally produced and interpreted, and, thus, capable of being re-designed in the interest of equity and social justice. The research methodology was guided by a critical qualitative and ethnographic approach, coupled with critical …

Experiences Of Adolescents And Drama: "This Is Bullsh*T. I Can't Do It", Erin K. Hulse Phd

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of this practitioner action research (PAR) study was to explore experiences of middle school students enrolled in a basic drama class, creating a performance piece that allowed for the representation of voices and opinions of participants. Seventh and eighth grade students developed work relating their perspectives on issues important to them--friendship, respect, equality, secrets, and moving on. Questions were 1) how are trust, ensemble, and community developed with the participants? 2) how do students respond to drama games, and 3) how do participants express their perspectives regarding issues using the creative drama strategies? Students created a performance of …

The Roles Of Digital Literacies And Critical Literacy For Black Adolescent Females, Jacqueline B. Koonce

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this conceptual thought paper is to argue for critical digital literacies instruction for all students, particularly students from marginalized populations. In this paper, the lived experiences of Black adolescent female avid readers were analyzed because of the complex nature of their discrimination due to their race and gender. Research questions included: What are the technologies and practices used by Black adolescent female avid readers? How and why do they use them? What are the implications for educators? To answer these questions, the voices of Black adolescent female readers from this author’s previous study were used to explore …

Students’ Experience Of Flow In A Critical Literacy Unit In A 6th Grade English/Language Arts Classroom, Barbara E. Mcclure

Doctor of Education in Secondary and Middle Grades Education Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to measure students’ experiences of engagement as conceptualized by flow during a critical literacy unit in a 6^th grade English Language Arts class. A total of 61 respondents replied to an 18-item survey consisting of 14-Likert scaled items, one identifier, two open-ended questions, and one multiple-choice question three times a day for five days. In addition, respondents completed a 7-item survey consisting of one identifier, three demographic questions, and three Likert-scaled items. All respondents were sixth grade students at a middle school just outside of a large city in the Southeastern United States. …

Critical Media Literacy Instruction With Teacher Residents In Urban Catholic Schools: A Comparative Case Study Approach To Implementation And Critical Transformational Learning, Jennifer K. Shah

Dissertations

Critical literacy is a cultivated habit that students learn in order to read media texts in their world more consciously. The Catholic context is ideal for work around critical media literacy due to a continued mission and vision around social justice. This research fills gaps in literature relating to critical media literacy in Catholic schools. The goals are threefold: (1) to study the transformational learning of teacher residents as they learn about and implement critical media literacy in urban Catholic schools, (2) to identify supports and barriers related to this process in order to better address critical media literacy implementation …

Transcribing Arts And Identities: A Case Study On Literacies At Guadalupe Middle School, R. Joseph RodríGuez

Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice

Through single-case study research at a middle school site, students whose first language is Spanish gain instruction in an English language arts classroom using literary works with guided, close reading. Moreover, students’ background, cultural, and prior knowledge are consulted by the teacher as literature comes to life via socially responsible biliteracies, which value students’ identities and cultural and linguistic wealth in the presence of bilingual literary narratives. Through a teacher’s literary lesson planning that complements students’ social interests, students are able to communicate their developing and bridging biliteracies, increase critical literacy awareness, and practice bilingual abilities through interactive instructional lessons …

Critical Language Awareness, Shelley K. Taylor, Collette Despagne, Farahnaz Faez

Education Publications

In the latter half of the 20th century, applied linguists, dissatisfied with the positioning of language teaching, called for a multidimensional curriculum to reframe teaching (about) languages, be they first or heritage languages (L1s or HLs); English as a second, foreign or international language (ESL, EFL and EIL); or other foreign languages (FLs). Their dissatisfaction stemmed from languages being viewed in isolation (like linguistic silos), an overemphasis on teaching the four skills in a discrete (unintegrated) manner, and decontextualized grammar and vocabulary teaching. Out of this discontent grew the notion of “language awareness,” with language awareness pedagogy implemented in the …

Imaginative Acts Of Resistance: Dramatic Storytelling In An Elementary School Classroom, Shannon K. Mcmanimon

Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal

This critical ethnographic project draws upon literature on imagination, critical literacy, and theatre to explore a sixth-grade class’s participation in a critical literacy and creative drama program. Through examples from the storytelling practices of the Neighborhood Bridges program, I outline how students and teachers (including a teaching artist) imagined, co-created, and revised storylines in their classroom; this collaboration provides an alternative to the common narrative of the constrained urban public school classroom. The resulting imaginative acts of resistance: 1) encourage and empower urban elementary students to enact relevant, collaborative community in their classrooms; 2) engage meaningful—not just functional—literacies; 3) ask …

“It’S Just Too Sad!”: Teacher Candidates’ Emotional Resistance To Picture Books, Aimee Papola-Ellis

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The use of critical literacy with children’s books that focus on social issues and disrupt the status quo can be a powerful way to create spaces for conversations with students about social justice and empowerment. Teacher candidates in a semester long children’s literature course were asked to respond to a range of children’s texts that dealt with many social issues and disrupted the commonplace. Despite an explicit emphasis on critical literacy and social justice, the candidates were very resistant to using many of the texts in their own future classrooms. They had strong emotional reactions that prevented them from consideration …

“It’S Just Too Sad!”: Teacher Candidates’ Emotional Resistance To Picture Books, Aimee Ellis

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

The use of critical literacy with children’s books that focus on social issues and disrupt the status quo can be a powerful way to create spaces for conversations with students about social justice and empowerment. Teacher candidates in a semester long children’s literature course were asked to respond to a range of children’s texts that dealt with many social issues and disrupted the commonplace. Despite an explicit emphasis on critical literacy and social justice, the candidates were very resistant to using many of the texts in their own future classrooms. They had strong emotional reactions that prevented them from consideration …

Writing For Transformation: Teen Girls Of Color And Critical Literacy In A Creative Writing Program, Rebecca Alber

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study explored the experiences and insights of four alumnae from a girls’ after-school writing program and the program’s transformative impact on development of their literacy, their voice, and their confidence. The writing program, InkGirls (a pseudonym), was for girls of color ages 13 to 18 who lived in metropolitan Los Angeles. Participants attended high-density public schools located in low-income neighborhoods. Curriculum and instructional practices in such public schools have been critiqued as substandard, rote, and lacking opportunities for critical thinking and student voice (Darder, 2015). Gender bias in the classroom, and the lack of representation of women of …

Preservice Teachers Engaged In Professional Learning Community To Explore Critical Literacy, Vanessa Casciola

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As demographics change, our school populations are ever changing. Preservice teachers (PSTs) need to be aware of how to meet the needs of all of their future students. Teacher education programs have been charged with the duty of preparing these PSTs for the diverse school population they will encounter. This qualitative multiple case study focused on the influence of specific work with PSTs in the inquiry process within a learning community to make sense of critical literacy. The following research questions guided this study: (1) How do elementary PSTs engaged in practitioner inquiry make meaning of critical literacy instruction within …

Coming To Know About Sacrifice Zones And Eco-Activism: Teaching And Learning About Climate Change, Alexandra Panos, James Damico

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

This paper shares curricular tools to engage in inquiry around issues related to environmental justice for upper elementary and middle grades students. Focusing on developing background knowledge and critical reading practices, the unit offers approaches to fiction and non-fiction online sources that promote an inquiry stance based in empathy and exploration. In addition to developing critical stances and questions to explore sacrifice zones and eco-activism, this paper shares many resources (texts and scaffolded tools) for praxical application in classrooms.

Using Critical Literacies To Instruct Through Multicultural Text To Enhance Comprehension, Higher Order Thinking Skills, And Respect For Other Diversities, Shannon Moncrief Enders

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this approach was to instruct students using critical literacies within the confines of multicultural texts. While using a variety of texts, students were exposed to text and “voices” they might not otherwise have heard as well as learned to comprehend better and learned to use higher order thinking skills beyond the words on the page.

Critical Literacy: An Innovative Approach To Learning Among Students With Reading Disabilities, Karyn Marie Chiapella

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

CRITICAL LITERACY: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO LEARNING AMONG STUDENTS WITH READING DISABILITIES

by

KARYN M. CHIAPELLA

DECEMBER 2015

Co-Advisors: Dr. Marshall Zumberg; Dr. Gerald Oglan

Major: Special Education

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Many students, particularly those with learning disabilities do not read and/ or write at levels sufficient for meeting the demands of the 21st century. Successfully reading to learn requires the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information from multiple texts. Critical literacy provides a framework for students to engage in dialogue with texts to become more aware of the relationships of power communicated within texts. This study …

Performing Critical Consciousness In Teaching: Entanglements Of Knowing, Feeling And Relating, Kathleen A. Mcdonough

Doctoral Dissertations

At a time when education reform is guided by neoliberalism, accountability and standardization have reshaped teaching as highly technocratic and threatened the democratic possibilities of public education. Even so, many teacher education programs have taken up the call to prepare teachers to teach for social justice, whether framed as multicultural education, critical literacy, or critical pedagogy. A construct that ties these pedagogical approaches together is critical consciousness, with the aim of some teacher education efforts to evoke critical consciousness among preservice teachers. This study focuses on exploring how nine educators from elementary grades to higher education experience and enact critical …

Critical Literacy In The Primary Grades, Whitney Talbert Spooner

Doctor of Education in Teacher Leadership Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study using ethnographic methods was to gain insights into how teachers of primary-aged students successfully enact critical literacy in their classrooms. Using a critical pedagogical theoretical framework, I addressed the following research questions: In what ways are teachers of primary grades modeling and fostering critical literacy within their classrooms? What challenges have primary-grades teachers faced when employing critical literacy practices? What suggestions would teachers offer to those who wish to move toward a more critical stance with their teaching? I interviewed nine K-3 teachers who had experience with critical literacy and supplemented interview data by …

Critical Literacy: Going Beyond The Demands Of Common Core, Aimee Ellis, Teddi L. Eberly

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

The article focuses on critical literacy. Critical literacy is based on the critical theory in education. It recognizes the value of employing literacy as an instrument for people to become empowered by questioning texts and using literacy for social change. Students engaged in critical literacy develop higher levels of analysis.

Articulating Situated Knowledge And Standpoints In Our Responses To Contemporary Street Fiction: A Book Club Case Study With African American Women, Yvette Rachele Hyde

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Contemporary street fiction is a form of literature that has been growing in popularity since the 1990s. Such novels are set in contemporary urban contexts and present the experiences of historically oppressed groups. Sold in venues such as independent bookstores, the Internet, barbershops, beauty salons, flea markets, street vendors, and churches (Hill, Pérez, & Irby, 2008; McClellan, 2011), this genre is especially popular among African American females. Because much of the scholarship concerning engagement with contemporary street fiction focuses on improving school literacy skills, the purpose of this study was to investigate readers’ responses in a book club held at …

Speaking Back To Structure: Critical Multimodal Media Literacy & The Politics Of School Reform, Kate Way

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores the development of critical multimodal and media literacy skills in high school aged students against the backdrop of current state and national education policy. Following the progress of students in a semester-long writing course that focuses on critical multimodal and media literacy, the study examines how critical literacy skills develop within different modes and mediums – particularly those enabled by new media and digital technologies – and considers the implications of critical multimodal and media literacy skills for student engagement, agency, and achievement. The study further analyzes the impact at the institutional level of educational reforms incentivized …

A Multiple Case Study Of Whiteness And Critical Literacy Practices Among White Elementary Teachers In Urban Public Schools, Amanda Rose Vandehei

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether white elementary teachers' perception of Whiteness influences critical literacy practices in elementary classrooms in an urban school district in the Southwest United States. This study consists of six white elementary school teachers.

Using Hardiman's model of White Identity Development, (WID) this study specifically explores the phenomenon of Whiteness and how teachers view themselves as having white privilege and advantage in American society. Hardiman's WID model includes five stages of white racial identity development in which a white person begins with no awareness of him or herself as a racial being and …

Critical Experiential Learning And Rhetorical Interventions In New Media Ecologies, Jennifer Niester-Mika

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation puts into conversation new media and network theories with the philosophical writings of John Dewey to reconstruct a more relevant and current approach to critical pedagogy that takes into account the shift in socioeconomic power as we move into a control society comprised of immaterial labor. My chapters tackle three different critical pedagogy dilemmas: the neglect of affect, agency in late-capitalism, and critical literacy in new media ecologies. Each chapter defines the dilemma, offers a theoretical response, and details a possible pedagogical application for the composition classroom.

Seeking Asylum Adolescents Explore The Crossroads Of Human Rights Education And Cosmopolitan Critical Literacy, Judith Dunkerly-Bean, Thomas Bean, Khaled Alnajjar

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Urban middle school students utilize human rights education and cosmopolitan critical literacy to explore local and global issues around immigrants and refugees through the production of a BYOT short film.

Exploring Critical Literacy Through Teachers’ Professional Learning, Christina Marie Ramirez-Nava

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

With a huge focus on professional development as a method to increase knowledge and skills, one-shot initiatives or flyby in-services bombard the teaching field. Moreover, with the increase of diversity, such as second language needs, children of poverty and other social issues in schools, a focus should be on implementing a critical stance through teacher collaboration

Critical literacy aims to make the unknown known and fight injustices, but many teachers are not aware of this ideology. Simply reading articles and books about critical literacy will not necessarily lead to a critical stance, pedagogical revolution, or engaging learning for students. Working …

Emerging Critical Literacy In Teachers As Novice Researchers, Jennifer Mitton Kukner

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper explores the experiences of three teachers as novice researchers as they taught full-time in a university English language school in Turkey. Viewing the participants’ experiences as researchers through a narrative understanding of teacher knowledge and a critical literacy lens enhanced their critical cognisance of their positioning as women instructors in a higher education setting. Their research experiences were shaped not only by their classroom concerns but also by expectations and larger social narratives that lived beyond their classroom doors. This study focuses specifically upon English language teachers and acknowledges the intersection of gender roles and contextual constraints as …

Exploring Elaborated Noun Phrase Use Of Middle School English Language Learners Following Writing Strategy Instruction, Stephanie R. Cooper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

English Language Learners (ELLs) are a growing population within the U.S. school system. In the secondary grades, this diverse group requires instruction to improve not only English language proficiency but also utilization of the academic language register, especially in writing tasks. The present study focused on ELLs in middle school. The aim was to explore the effects of enhanced Self–Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) writing instruction on the use of complex language, particularly elaborated noun phrases (ENPs) when SRSD was combined with linguistic instruction on increased sentence complexity.

As a part of a larger study exploring critical literacy and the persuasive …