Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Prioritizing Social Emotional Learning With Interactive Read Alouds, Lindsay Stoetzel, Kelly Vigants

Michigan Reading Journal

The need for social emotional learning (SEL) in schools has never been higher. Yet, teachers need strategic support and training in order to integrate SEL into academic instruction. The literacy classroom provides a perfect venue for SEL integration with strong continuity and overlap between SEL dimensions and literacy standards. In this article, the authors explore how one high leverage literacy practice, the interactive read aloud, can be strategically adapted to intentionally target those SEL skills. The authors provide multiple examples and resources to guide teacher teams to reflect upon and prepare their own interactive read alouds to foster SEL goals …

Awareness & Access Matter: Making Professional Associations Available To Support Literacy Teachers’ Ongoing Pl, Kathleen S. Howe, Suzanne M. Tiemann

Michigan Reading Journal

Literacy professional associations offer members a wide range of support and services and historically play important roles in literacy teachers’ ongoing professional learning. Despite many benefits, membership in professional associations, including literacy groups, has declined. This article explores possible factors for decreases (changes to PL, technology, & generational mix of teaching force), before adding others: two emergent themes (awareness and access) from related survey research with K-12 literacy teachers in a midwestern state. Suggestions are offered to stakeholders for ways to raise awareness and improve access to associations for literacy teachers – an important tool for ongoing literacy professional learning.

Back To The Future: Looking At Nostalgic Practices To Conceptualize A More Inclusive Literacy Future (Part 1), Rebecca Witte, Darreth Rice

Michigan Reading Journal

In the first of two articles, the authors, two girls that “Just Want to Have Fun,” reminisce about educational literacy practices of the past, specifically one nostalgic writing practice, dialogue journaling. Using the analogy of a familiar toy from the 1980s, the View Master, they aim to revitalize an antiquated practice using modern theoretical frameworks (reels) that make current classroom practices more inclusive for today’s students. Looking to “reels” of academic (using current state standards), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), social emotional learning (Mussey, 2019), and humanizing instruction (Freire, 1968), we support current teachers in analyzing their practices to foster …

Facilitating Chinese Language Education With Chinese Calligraphy, Huiwen Li

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Chinese Calligraphy, a treasure of traditional Chinese culture, maintains considerable significance within the realm of global Chinese education. This article thoroughly scrutinizes the inherent value of calligraphy courses in overseas Chinese education. Primarily, it delves into the profound impact calligraphy classes have on students' Chinese language proficiency, intercultural cognitive skills, and aesthetic appreciation. Furthermore, this article elucidates the lamentable scarcity of calligraphy, while simultaneously revealing a range of strategic solutions to address this pressing issue. These strategies encompass comprehensive teacher training, optimization of teaching methodologies, creation of comprehensive calligraphy course materials and resources, as well as the procurement of substantial …

Front Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Front matter and editors' introduction to The Writing Center Journal 41:3 (2023).

The Idea Of A Writing Center In Brazil: A Different Beat, Ron Martinez

The Writing Center Journal

This article explores the emergence and development of writing centers in Brazil, using the author’s experience founding the Centro de Assessoria de Publicação Acadêmica (CAPA) at the Universidade Federal do Paraná as a case study. The author provides some historical context about Brazilian education and its traditional “banking model” of education (Paulo Freire) that did not value individual expression—including through writing. This model persisted even as composition studies evolved elsewhere. Academic literacy development in Brazil is thus a relatively recent phenomenon, and the effects of that paucity are felt among scholars in higher education settings. This motivated the author’s research …

An Exploratory Study Of Mindsets, Sense Of Belonging, And Help-Seeking In The Writing Center, Traci Freeman, Steve Getty

The Writing Center Journal

In this exploratory study, we took as our point of departure Lori Salem’s (2016) call to investigate the factors that affect students’ decisions to visit the writing center. Rather than exploring student decision-making through a sociological lens, as Salem does, we drew on insights from social psychology to understand students’ motivations. We explored two self-theories drawn from social psychology that are associated with students’ academic achievement and with students’ help-seeking: (1) implicit beliefs about intelligence or “mindsets”; and (2) sense of belonging. Using questions from previously validated scales, we measured first-year students’ mindsets and sense of belonging and tested the …

Timely, Relevant, Practical: A Study Of Writing Center Summer Institute Alumni Perceptions Of Value And Benefits, Julia Bleakney, Mark Hall, Kelsey Hixson-Bowles, Sohui Lee, Nathalie Singh-Corcoran

The Writing Center Journal

Since its inception in 2003, the IWCA Summer Institute (SI) has been understood within the writing center field to be an important professional development opportunity for new and experienced writing center professionals (WCPs). Publications on the SI to date have focused on anecdotal perceptions of the benefits to leaders and participants or on a single outcome, such as research output. Thus, the writing center field knows little about how and in what ways participants perceive the SI’s benefits across cohorts and across a variety of professional areas. By gathering quantitative and qualitative data from every SI cohort from 2003 to …

Effectively Affective: Examining The Ethos Of One Hbcu Writing Center, Karen Keaton Jackson, Amara Hand

The Writing Center Journal

Over the past several decades, writing center scholarship has evolved to include multiple theories and pedagogies that led to widely used best practices. As is the case in many disciplines, often writing centers at large, research PWIs are most often cited and highlighted within the scholarship. While many of those readings do offer helpful strategies for working with students at all levels, often they do not account for the unique contexts and diverse student populations that make up many HBCUs. As a result, more research from a variety of writing centers is needed so practitioners see there are multiple ways …

Accidental Outreach And Happenstance Staffing: A Cross-Institutional Study Of Writing Center Support Of First-Generation College Students, Beth A. Towle

The Writing Center Journal

First-generation students (FGS) make up a significant percentage of college populations. However, they experience hardships that are less common for their continuing-generation peers. They struggle to understand the “rules” of college and lack the cultural capital that can help students succeed through generations of knowledge about how to navigate college. Writing centers attempt to lessen these burdens by providing outreach to marginalized student populations, including FGS. However, there has been a lack of cross-institutional research that examines exactly how writing centers support FGS. This article presents a mixed-methods study that begins to close that knowledge gap and demonstrate common patterns …

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for Writing Center Journal 41.3.

Asynchronous And Rhetorical: Appointment Forms And Their Effect On Writer-Consultant Exchanges, Lizzie Hutton, Kate Francis, Danielle Hart, Anita Long, Brenda Tyrrell

The Writing Center Journal

Especially in the wake of the recent pandemic, asynchronous consulting has become increasingly central to writing center work. Yet writing center scholarship has little attended to the significant impact writer input can have on asynchronous writer-consultant exchanges. Drawing on asynchronous consultation data collected before and after our 2019 redesign of our writing center’s asynchronous system, this comparative study examines the specific effect of the writer appointment form on the nature of both writers’ requests for feedback (RFFs) and consultants’ resulting comments. Our findings suggest that differently designed appointments forms can scaffold significantly different kinds of asynchronous writer-consultant exchanges, especially visible …

How Genre-Trained Tutors Affect Student Writing And Perceptions Of The Writing Center, Lucy Bryan Malenke, Laura K. Miller, Paul E. Mabrey Iii, Jared Featherstone

The Writing Center Journal

Writing center scholars have long debated whether writers are best served by “generalist” tutors trained in writing center pedagogy or “specialist” tutors with insider knowledge about a course’s content or discipline-specific discourse conventions. A potential compromise that has emerged is training tutors in the purposes and features of specific genres. The writing center literature showcases many different approaches to genre training. However, little empirical research, if any, has explored how tutors’ genre knowledge affects session outcomes. The present study used a mixed-methods approach to compare session outcomes for students who worked with generalist and genre-trained tutors. We analyzed pre-consultation and …

Writing Centers And Neocolonialism: How Writing Centers Are Being Commodified And Exported As U.S. Neocolonial Tools, Brian Hotson, Stevie Bell

The Writing Center Journal

In this paper, we explore the complicity of writing centers in the Global North in global neocolonialism despite its resounding rejection within Western writing center scholarship, in which Romeo García contends that writing tutors can be “decolonial agents.” We show that higher education is used by governments in the Global North as a neocolonial tool and situate international U.S. writing center initiatives within this context. Writing centers have remained complicit in global neocolonialism involving the commodification and exportation of American English as well as Western-style institutions, curricula, and pedagogies. This is most explicit in recent writing center initiatives undertaken by …

Review: Unwell Writing Centers: Searching For Wellness In Neoliberal Educational Institutions And Beyond, Aurora Matzke

The Writing Center Journal

“Unwell Writing Centers: Searching for Wellness in Neoliberal Educational Institutions and Beyond” blends narrative, mixed methods research, and rhetorical analysis to make a case for the possibilities inherent in homegrown wellness practices that are “communal, political, and rooted in defiance of white supremacy.”

Content Area Language And Literacy, Saadia Ali, Margaret A. Berg

Open Textbooks & Reviews

Content Area Literacy courses have long been a requirement in teacher education programs for pre-service teachers for the secondary level and, sometimes, for the elementary level. The 2020 World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Framework takes a genre approach that aligns well with the traditional Content Area Literacy courses in teacher preparation programs. WIDA argues for an educational approach that fosters (a) equity of opportunity and access, (b) integration of content and language, (c) collaboration among stakeholders, and (d) a functional approach to language development. This textbook examines the elements that make up the Simple View of Reading with adjustments …

Effects Of Emotional And Behavioral Disorders And Executive Dysfunction On Literacy Achievement: Through The Lens Of Secondary-Level Education, Natalie Deutsch

Student Research Poster Presentations 2024

The study examined the effects of emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) and executive dysfunction on literacy achievement in secondary-level education. The research questions focused on behavior interventions for at-risk students with behavioral disorders, the association between E/BD signs and reading deficits, incorporating executive functioning skills into reading instruction, and the positive and negative effects of self-contained classrooms on students with EBD. The study found that accommodating the specific needs of students with E/BD and executive dysfunction led to a statistically significant increase in mean test scores. The methods involved tiered intervention programs within the Units of Study curriculum, executive functioning …

Mothers' Perceptions Of Stigma: Implications For Early Identification And Treatment For Children With A History Of Prenatal Opioid Exposure, Pamela Jane Holland

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

There is a lack of research that specifies the long-term effects on a child’s language development when prenatally exposed to opioids (Fill et al.,2018; Rutherford et al., 2022). Despite this, children prenatally exposed to opioids are more likely to be referred for, qualify for, and receive therapy services secondary to developmental delays and speech/language deficits. (Kaltenbach et al., 2018). Stigma continues to be a barrier to the initiation of early intervention services for children prenatally exposed to opioids (Levickis et al., 2020; Livingston et al., 2011; Peacock-Chambers et al., 2020). This phenomenological study aims to understand the perceptions of the …

Flannery O'Connor And Storytelling Unit Of Study, Caroline Lacksen, Natalie Puckett, Keith Pruett, Erin Smith, Nathan Pearson, Lashonda Hurst, Jessica Mcquain, Timothy Connors

Writing for Success

The Writing for Success grant sponsored by the federal Department of Education pioneered the creation of a standards-based fifth grade unit of study focused on Flannery O’Connor and the theme of local storytelling. This project utilizes an author study, digital humanities, and intensive writing instruction to engage students with an important Georgia writer and boost their interest and engagement with various forms of written and oral expression.

Through exposure to a variety of communication forms, including narrative, informational, and opinion writing in addition to oral history, poetry, song, and podcasting, students gain confidence in evaluating the context and audience of …

Multilingual Learners Speak Out: The Perspectives Of High School Esol Students On Computer-Assisted Instruction And Digital Literacy Platforms, Mitchell Ray Sexton

Doctor of Arts in English Pedagogy Capstones

This capstone project explores the impact of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) and digital literacy platforms on the language learning experiences of high school English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students. Employing a mixed yet complementary research design that integrates phenomenological and action research, the study engaged 23 students through surveys and interviews to investigate their experiences with three instructional platforms: Achieve 3000, Duolingo, and Lexia PowerUp. The analysis revealed a strong preference for Duolingo, attributed to its user-friendly interface, comprehensive language practice features, and, notably, its mobile accessibility and relevance to real-world applications beyond academic contexts. The findings demonstrate the …

A Little Cuckoo: A Book About Finding Your Place, Elizabeth Berkowitz

Graduate Student Independent Studies

The research collected in this study aims to support students, teachers, and families in understanding that friendships take many forms and that neurodivergent students don’t always make friends in the same way as their peers.

Lucy Calkins, Units Of Study, Balanced Literacy, And The Art Of Not Being Silly, Andrew P. Johnson

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Reading Fluency After Coronavirus-19 Lockdown, Lauren Balogh

Student Research Poster Presentations 2024

This poster's research discusses the impact of the Coronavirus-19 lockdown on students' reading fluency and the effectiveness of the hybrid method. It also explores the struggles students face in meeting benchmark scores after the lockdown.

Investigating The Perceptions Of The Professional Development Experience Of Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (Siop) In A Pk-8th Grade District, Joseph Trsar

Dissertations of Practice

INVESTIGATING THE PERCEPTIONS OF THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCE OF SHELTERED INSTRUCTION OBSERVATION PROTOCOL

(SIOP) IN A PK-8TH GRADE DISTRICT

This dissertation explores the perceptions of staff members who have received professional development in Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) and their motivation to implement the strategies learned during the training. There is an increasing number of non-native English speakers in the Illinois education system and a large emphasis on how to best serve this growing population. Providing educators with professional development in SIOP is one strategy many districts utilize to meet this growing population. This dissertation investigated the experiences of several …

Empowering English Proficiency: A Program To Excellence In The Vietnam Mekong Delta For Advancing English Proficiency For Future Generations, Dang Thai Bao Vy

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

This thesis outlines the three primary strategies for FPT University in Vietnam to implement a successful "Abroad English Semester Program" (AbES) for her undergraduate students. The first strategy focuses on program design, emphasizing a well-structured curriculum that balances language skills and cultural immersion. The second strategy involves student selection, setting clear English proficiency benchmarks and conducting interviews to ensure student motivation and suitability. The third strategy addresses logistics and support, including partnering with universities, providing pre-departure training, and offering ongoing assistance. The key components in this thesis are inclusive of comprehensive program design, language immersion, skill development, student selection, evaluations …

Literacy Teachers In The Making: A Look At Teacher Candidates’ Experiences As They Tutor Elementary Students, Hannah Carter, Jadelyn Abbott

Literacy, Language and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher candidates’ perceptions of their first experience teaching literacy. Using a case study design, this research spans two consecutive semesters and investigates 34 teacher candidates’ reflections as they engaged in structured tutoring in a university-based literacy clinic. Qualitative analyses of various reflections revealed that teacher candidates largely focused on planning and delivering quality instruction, understanding students and families, and contemplating what it takes to become a teacher. We found that over the course of the tutoring experience, candidates’ reflections shifted from (1) being micro-focused on details to focused on their student, (2) …

Understanding The Virginia Literacy Act, Candace Bechtold, Kimberly Bridges, David Naff, Joan A. Rhodes, Valerie Robnolt, Tara Davison, Suzanne Alexandre, Michael Crusco, Karli Johansen, Amber Butler, Allison Yandle, Jennifer Askue-Collins, Jean Samuel, Sharrie Merritte, Regina Frazier

MERC Publications

This research and policy brief from the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) offers an overview of the Virginia Literacy Act. It is structured to explore the following questions: 1) What are the recent trends in reading achievement in Virginia? 2) What are the policy implications of the VLA for Virginia school divisions? 3) What does the research say about Science of Reading (SoR)? 4) What core instructional programs are approved to meet the VLA? It concludes with a series of key takeaways and recommendations.

Click here to listen to our podcast episode on the Virginia Literacy Act and click here …

The Use Of Graphic Organizers On The Reading Comprehension Of High School Students, Beckylee Ramos Lorenzo

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

This study seeks to identify correlation in the use of graphic organizers in reading comprehension of twelfth grade English language arts students. Specifically, this study seeks to determine if the use of graphic organizers in the teaching of reading has impacts on the reading comprehension of 12th grade English language arts students. The study intends to contribute to closing an information gap surrounding the effects of using instructional strategies such as graphic organizers in reading comprehension in a twelfth-grade English class. The research questions helped to guide this study in identifying descriptive statistics within PSAT reading comprehension scores during the …

How Middle-Grade Students Navigate The School Library And Grade-Level Reading Classroom To Support Their Independent Reading And Literate Selves, Laura Crisp

Dissertations of Practice

Middle school, a time of great change for early adolescents, is also a time of declining interest in independent reading. This study examines the experiences of 27 middle-grade students as they navigate the complex systems within their school, the grade-level reading classroom, and the school library and work to support their independent reading. Each student had free access to the school library and time in class dedicated to independent reading. Yet, students had vastly different experiences in the classroom and school library; further, the special education students and general education students experienced in-class independent reading in very different ways due …

Teaching Comprehension To Students On The Autism Spectrum With Hyperlexia: A Case Study, Shannon Monahan

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This curriculum unit describes an 8-lesson intervention using a graphic novel to develop comprehension skills for a hyperlexic 2nd grade student with autism spectrum disorder in a special education classroom.