Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Focus On Friendship Or Fights For Civil Rights? Teaching The Difficult History Of Japanese American Incarceration Through The Bracelet, Noreen N. Rodríguez

Occasional Paper Series

Japanese American incarceration is one of few Asian American historical topics addressed in P-12 curriculum. A dearth of children’s literature is available about Japanese American incarceration, yet given young learners’ limited exposure to World War II historical narratives, simply reading a picturebook about the topic does not ensure that students and teachers will address the injustices involved in the event. This study contrasts the distinct pedagogical approaches taken up by two Texas elementary educators who read aloud Yoshiko Uchida’s The Bracelet, a picturebook that details a young Japanese American girl’s forced removal from her home.

We Are All Learning About Climate Change: Teaching With Picture Books To Engage Teachers And Students, Ysaaca D. Axelrod, Denise Ives, Rachel Weaver

Occasional Paper Series

The topic of climate change and climate justice is politically charged, doesn’t sit neatly within a single subject or content area, and raises concerns of not being ‘age appropriate’ for young children. In this paper we describe how teacher educators in an elementary education program support a student teacher who took up the topic of climate change and climate justice in her 1st grade teaching placement. She designed a unit around a picture book that focuses on the words and work of Greta Thunberg, and used a diverse set of texts to support students’ understanding of the complexity of climate …

Student Experiences, Attitudes, And Perceptions Toward Online Collaborative Tools: A Case Study, Jeremy Easley

Doctor of Education in Teacher Leadership Dissertations

Abstract

This case study (Merriam, 1998) describes the experiences, attitudes, and perceptions of four twelfth-grade students at Bob Jones High School (pseudonym) with literacy deficiencies as they used collaborative technology tools in an online after-school tutoring program that focused on reading and writing skills. Leveraging the sociocultural theory of reading (Freebod & Luke, 1990), participants worked collaboratively to strengthen skills while completing tasks. In addition, students used online collaborative tools, based on the principles of the New Literacies Studies (Gee, 2010), to construct and share meaning. Data collection included semi-structured interviews, participant observation and student artifacts. The data from these …

Pembangunan Laman Sesawang Tatabahasa Tamil Sekolah Menengah, Alagesan Ambikapathy

Student Works (2020-2029)

Isu kurang minat dan pencapaian rendah murid dalam aspek tatabahasa menyebabkan perlunya bahan pengajaran tatabahasa Tamil yang berinovasi. Dengan itu, kajian ini bertujuan membangunkan laman sesawang tatabahasa Tamil bagi meningkatkan minat dan pencapaian murid dalam tatabahasa Tamil. Kaedah reka bentuk dan pembangunan yang dipelopori oleh Richey dan Klein (2014) telah digunakan dalam kajian ini yang melibatkan tiga fasa kajian, iaitu fasa analisis keperluan, reka bentuk dan pembangunan dan penilaian. Data fasa analisis keperluan dikumpul dengan menggunakan borang soal selidik yang melibatkan 152 murid-murid Tingkatan Empat dan temu bual separa berstruktur dengan empat guru bahasa Tamil. Data soal selidik dianalisis secara …

Exploring The Role Of Training In Promoting Students’ Peer-Feedback Including Critical Peer-Feedback, Fatma Kaya, Zeynep Yaprak

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

The question of how critical-thinking skills could be integrated into English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pedagogy has been one of the main concerns in the field of language teaching and learning as they have a great potential to increase the quality of learning and teaching. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether training based on peer feedback, including critical feedback, contributes to participants’ peer feedback and critical feedback performances. The participants, who were undergraduate English Language Teaching (ELT) students (n = 40), were exposed to an 8-week training program in which several feedback criteria, including critical ones, …

Investigating Early Childhood Educators’ Experiences In Teaching Phonological Awareness: A Case Study, Kristine Reilly

All Theses And Dissertations

Literacy instruction, or teaching educators how to teach reading, is increasingly important as the effects of illiteracy impact everyone from the individual level to the societal level. The cost of illiteracy to the global economy is estimated at $1.2 trillion U.S. dollars (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). Improving literacy for all becomes a social justice concern as access to literacy opens avenues to further education and to improved physical and mental wellbeing. Over the past forty years, neurocognitive and behavioral science has demonstrated how the human brain learns to read. However, educator training programs and professional development have not kept pace …

The Rhetorical Structure And Persuasive Principles Used In Malaysian Smartphone Web Advertisements, Thenmalar Chandran

Student Works (2020-2029)

The aim of this study is to identify the rhetorical structure used in Malaysian smartphone web advertisements. This study also aims to identify how the principles of persuasions are realised in the Malaysian smartphone web advertisements. The five websites used for the purpose of this research were selected based on a Google Search which indicated the top five most popular and accessed websites. The first five websites that were shown and selected were www.11street.com.my, www.directd.com.my, www.satugadget.com.my, www.ipmart.com.my and www.lazada.com.my and 11street.com.my. The five smartphone models and brands were selected based on the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) Quarterly Mobile Phone …

International Conference On Language And Culture, University For Business And Technology - Ubt

UBT International Conference

UBT Annual International Conference is the 9th international interdisciplinary peer reviewed conference which publishes works of the scientists as well as practitioners in the area where UBT is active in Education, Research and Development. The UBT aims to implement an integrated strategy to establish itself as an internationally competitive, research-intensive university, committed to the transfer of knowledge and the provision of a world-class education to the most talented students from all background. The main perspective of the conference is to connect the scientists and practitioners from different disciplines in the same place and make them be aware of the recent …

Supporting Public School Students' Education And Adaptation To U.S. Schools While Celebrating Bilingualism, Allison Crosbie

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

In this paper, the author discusses her experience with the service-learning program Ayuda y Aprende while taking Spanish 301 at Purdue University. Ayuda y Aprende is a service-learning program through the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, in which advanced Spanish students work with Lafayette and West Lafayette elementary school children of Spanish-speaking families to help them adjust to the English language and American school culture, as well as improve their Spanish. During the weekly visits, university students work with children individually and in groups to assist them with school tasks such as classwork and homework. There was also time for …

When You Don’T Know What You Don’T Know: How Two New Collections Librarians Right-Sized A Collections Budget, Cara M. Cadena, Marcia Lee

Charleston Library Conference

Due to impending campus-wide downsizing, the Grand Valley State University (GVSU) Libraries projected that a worst-case scenario would result in a 14% cut to the library’s collections budget for fiscal year 2020. In the same year, GVSU Libraries welcomed several new members of its leadership team, including the dean, two associate deans, head of systems, head of collections, business administrator, and a vacancy after the long-time acquisitions manager retired. Budget cuts and staff turnover are tough, but they prompted a much-needed reassessment of roles, culture, and priorities in the library. Different approaches to spending and curating the library’s collections were …

What Are Students Saying About Their Reference Needs?, Damon Zucca

Charleston Library Conference

Libraries and publishers rely on transactional data to support evidence-based decision making. However, by itself quantitative information does not provide a full picture. To anticipate the evolving needs of our audience we also need to hear from the individual users themselves. In this article, I will review the findings from several recent examples survey-based research into the question of how students use reference materials in and outside of their libraries. What are students actually saying about their needs and preferences when it comes to reference? While some uses cases for reference are moving out of the library into the open …

Blogging In Elementary Classrooms: Mentoring Teacher Candidates’ To Use Formative Writing Assessment And Connect Theory To Practice, Diane R. Collier, Tiffany L. Gallagher

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This paper presents a collaborative approach to professional learning in which classroom teachers mentored teacher candidates to connect theory and practice through formative assessment to improve students’ writing. Professional learning sessions pairing the teachers and teacher candidates occurred in each of the fall and winter semesters in two years of this project. Data were collected at these sessions and during focus group debriefings. The findings are themes related to: lines of communication and levels of collaboration; teachers’ pedagogical decisions about blogging and writing in their classrooms; classroom teachers and teacher candidates enacting formative writing assessment in the blogging platform; the …

Examining Elementary Teachers’ Feelings Of Self-Efficacy As Writers: Do The Writing Samples Tell More Compelling Stories?, Elizabeth Bifuh-Ambe

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Teaching writing to elementary students can be a difficult instructional task for many teachers, due to the complexity of the writing process and the variety of skills that students must demonstrate to be considered proficient writers. Because quality instruction is highly predictive of students’ achievements, teachers need to feel competent in various subject-specific disciplines. This mixed-methods study examines the role of professional development in fostering elementary teachers’ writing proficiency, and improving their feelings of self-efficacy as writers. Results indicate that it is difficult for teachers whose students struggle with writing to feel confident in their own writing abilities.

Building Writing Identities: Integrating Explicit Strategies With Authentic Writing Experiences To Engage At-Promise Writers, Robert A. Griffin, Morris R. Council Iii, Tamra W. Ogletree, Jennifer K. Allen, Bethany L. Scullin

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

The message of what constitutes good writing instruction, though promulgated for decades, has not always nor consistently trickled down to P–12 schools, where writing instruction is often focused on preparing students for success on standardized tests and where prescriptive and formulaic approaches to teaching writing are prevalent. Part of the reason for this might be that teachers are not always familiar enough with authentic writing experiences that adequately engage all learners. As scholars in the fields of literacy and special education, respectively, the authors combine their collective expertise to address this concern. They offer skills-based tools and strategies that can …

Preservice English Teachers’ Evolving Conceptions Of 21st-Century Writing, Amber Jensen

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This study used stimulated-recall interviews throughout four secondary English preservice teachers’ (PSTs) semester-long student teaching internships to examine how critical teaching moments shaped their evolving conceptions of 21st-century writing. The article first describes the participants’ collective definitions of features and experiences of 21st-century writing in the ELA classroom, focusing specifically on how they understood digital and multimodal composition. It then examines two case studies that demonstrate how PSTs’ teaching experiences destabilized, challenged, and contradicted their emerging definitions. Findings suggest that English educators may engage PSTs in conceptualizing nuanced and flexible 21st-century writing pedagogies as they construct field experiences as reflective …

Reaching Across The High School-College Divide To Represent The Other: A Meta-Analysis Of The Literature, Jessica R. Campbell

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Starting from the question of how high school and college writing teachers and teacher educators understand and represent what happens in each others' spaces, this meta-analysis establishes a baseline taxonomy of the ways in which we cross the divide. Combing through literature published in representative high school and college English professional journals since the introduction of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2010, this analysis finds five thematic clusters of how writing instructors understand and represent each other across the high school-college divide: (a) document analysis of the CCSS and the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing; (b) studies …

The Dimensions Of Teachers Who Write And The Essence Of A Writing Life, Shari L. Daniels, Pamela Beck

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

The purpose of this grounded theory case study was to explore the perceptions among ten K-12 teachers who teach writing and also write themselves. What are the key essentials for teachers to sustain a writing life? What habits of mind or attitudes are necessary for teachers to sustain a writing life? Interviews served as the primary data source along with writing artifacts from the participants’ own writing life. Findings indicate that teacher-writers committed to a writing life do so for the purpose of 1) discovering meaning, 2) connections to others 3) commitment to learning and 4) well-being, with an overall …

Teachers Writing, Healing, And Resisting, Anne Elrod Whitney

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

For at least the past twenty years, writing education and writing teacher education have been carried out in more and more tightly managed, neoliberally influenced policy conditions as well as worsening conditions of inequality in educational resources based on both race and on income. The result is increasingly dehumanizing conditions for teaching and learning writing. This context intersects in interesting ways with the notion of the teacher-writer. This essay re-raises and reframes the idea of the teacher-writer to open up possibilities for both resilience, and resistance-- both in teachers’ individual lives, and for teachers in the collective sense.

A Call For Cautious Interpretation Of Meta-Analytic Reviews, Frank Boers, Lara Bryfonski, Farahnaz Faez, Todd Mckay

Education Publications

Meta-analytic reviews collect available empirical studies on a specified domain and calculate the average effect of a factor. Educators as well as researchers exploring a new domain of inquiry may rely on the conclusions from meta-analytic reviews rather than reading multiple primary studies. This article calls for caution in this regard, because the outcome of a meta-analysis is determined by how effect sizes are calculated, how factors are defined, and how studies are selected for inclusion. Three recently published meta-analyses are re-examined to illustrate these issues. One illustrates the risk of conflating effect sizes from studies with different design features, …

A Phenomenological Study Of International Students In Us Graduate Programs Through The Lens Of Personal Growth Initiative Construct, Hannah E. Acquaye Phd, Cari Welch, Leah N. Jacobs, Arielle Ross

The Qualitative Report

Humans, unlike other creatures, have an inherent desire to develop and grow. This desire to grow, Personal Growth Initiative, is an intentional way that humans cognitively and behaviorally navigate their environment and resources to effect change. While many researchers argue that this construct works only in individualistic cultures, others contend that the construct is applicable to collectivist cultures as well. We therefore undertook an exploration of the lived experiences of eight international students from predominantly collectivist cultures, through the lens of the Personal Growth Initiative theory. Using a phenomenological qualitative methodology, we interviewed these doctoral students via semi-structured interview …

The Case For Mandatory Literacy Training For Elementary Education Principals, Catherine Mcgeehan, Meganlyn Norris

Journal of Organizational & Educational Leadership

The focus of this study was to examine how well Educational Leadership programs prepare principals to serve as literacy leaders. The role of a school leader is complex and multifaceted involving managerial duties and resource allocation (Jenkins, 2009). Yet, the primary role of the school leader is “…to promote the learning and success for all students” (Lunenburg, 2010, p. 1). In a 2017 report commissioned by the Learning Policy Institute, Sutcher, Podolsky and Espinoza noted a strong positive correlation between instructional leadership and student achievement. This raises questions and concerns regarding the extent to which leadership preparation programs are preparing …

Writing That Counts: Grounding A Critique Of The Common Core English Language Arts Standards In Classroom Memories, Katie Nagrotsky, Anaisbely Franjul Grullon

Democracy & Education

The authors of this article call upon classroom memories to demonstrate the harm of the standardized testing apparatus in the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Goal setting under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has led to targeted school intervention based on metrics, and many states have chosen to double down on standardized ELA and math test data to determine the quality of a school, student learning, and teacher effectiveness. The authors argue that the assessments associated with the ELA Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are harmful to all students, and particularly students from marginalized communities whose literacies are not …

Persuasive Strategies In The English Translations Of The Al-Baqarah Quranic Verses, Dalal A. S. Aldahshan

Student Works (2020-2029)

The persuasive act refers to the performance of an act with the use of a specific form of communication through language, one of the most essential factors used in influencing people's thoughts and attitudes, setting decisions and controlling values. The persuasive act can be used in many ways by influencing the thoughts and behavior of people or in advertisement which sell products or services by way of convincing people to buy certain products or services. In politics, it is also used to convince people to change their political beliefs or ideologies. On the religious side, the persuasive act is considered …

Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, And Pedagogy, Raven Jones Stanbrough

Michigan Reading Journal

No abstract provided.

Essential Practices For Disciplinary Literacy Instruction In Secondary Classrooms, Laura Gabrion, Michelle Renna, Megan Schrauben, Jenelle Williams

Michigan Reading Journal

In response to the call for increased literacy and more equitable learning opportunities across the state of Michigan, the 6-12 Disciplinary Literacy Task Force formed. The group’s first charge was to revise and publish the Essential Practices for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction in the Secondary Classroom: Grades 6 to 12, based on the work of lead researchers from the University of Michigan, Drs. Elizabeth Moje and Darin Stockdill. During the 2019-2020 school year, education consultants and educators from around Michigan participated in the Regional One-Day Institute, which served as an introduction to the Essential Practices for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction in …

Creating An Online Community Of Learners During The Covid-19 Shutdown Using Michigan’S Literacy Essentials, Annie P. Spear

Michigan Reading Journal

When a global pandemic shuts down our educational system it is critical to mobilize quickly and effectively to support children and families. This article explores one educator's experience of setting up free online classes to support students during the COVID-19 shutdown. Participants ranged in age from 3 to 12 and were from Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Ohio. The author outlines how she designed classes, engaged with children and families, and provided instruction that was grounded in literacy research and Michigan's Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy while guided by developmentally appropriate pedagogy. Specific practices that foster motivation and engagement …

I Wrote My Way Out, Sharon Murchie

Michigan Reading Journal

When the pandemic caused schools to close, I challenged myself to write a blog post a day about the experience. I had expected to write funny posts about the ridiculousness of the entire situation, sheltering-in-place in a too-small space with too many people. Instead, I wrote about that and so much more. Throughout this journaling experience, I came to several realizations about me, about my students, about my family, about my profession, about our state, and about our country.

Let's Read A Story!: Collaborative Meaning Making, Student Engagement, And Vocabulary Building Through The Use Of Interactive Read-Alouds, Shaya Helbig, Susan V. Piazza

Michigan Reading Journal

The interactive read-aloud has long been a practice during early literacy instruction in schools and in homes. Reading aloud to children provides a platform for teachers or caregivers to model meaning-making interactions with text. Students are able to collaboratively engage in conversations to create a collective understanding of texts. Interactions during a read-aloud can foster engagement, create meaning, and promote vocabulary acquisition. This article examines current research that supports the use of interactive read alouds to engage learners in meaning-making processes and translates research and theory into practical recommendations for effective interactive read-alouds.

Storying Silence: A Visual Essay, Galicia S. Blackman

The Goose

In this visual essay, I explore the concept of silence as an interpretative phenomenon. In preparation for an inquiry into instructors’ and students’ experiences of silence in class discussions, I readied myself for the study by conducting a self-study of what silence meant to me. My rationale was two-fold: a researcher acknowledges and includes biases as part of the research in interpretive inquiry, and I was at odds with how to describe the disconnect between my personal appreciation for silences and my discomfort with silence in the classroom. The obvious response is that different spaces make different demands of my …

Forced Transitions: Learning Asl In A Virtual Environment, Kara Gournaris

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Engagement with native language models is essential for second language acquisition. Social distancing mandates made this interaction nearly impossible for students learning American Sign Language (ASL), at a small rural university in western Oregon. COVID-19 brought with it many challenges, not the least of which was a hurried transition from face-to-face to online learning. The author found that some courses degraded in content and instruction when shifting to an online platform. Without access to community events where native language models were present, ASL students had less opportunities for incidental learning, legitimate peripheral participation, and connection within Deaf communities of practice.