Literacy最新文献

Using data collected during a qualitative study of a book group in an after-school programme at a public, urban elementary school, in this article, I analyse how immigrant- and refugee-background students discursively distanced themselves from the portrayal of refugees in the text Outcasts United. The teacher chose this book because she believed it reflected students' own experiences. Yet they often resisted making personal connections to the refugee stories depicted, instead employing various discursive strategies to distance themselves and their experiences from those in the text. The study uses microethnographic and discourse analytical methods to examine interactions where students redirected conversations away from teacher-proposed connections. Findings underscore how connection-making is not universally straightforward or applicable, especially when assuming shared identities among minoritized students. By analysing instances where students engaged in distancing and disconnection-making, this study emphasizes the value of fostering both connections and disconnections in literacy instruction. Implications for educators include the creation of spaces that encourage diverse, authentic responses to texts, as well as future teacher training and curriculum design that fosters students' ability to push against narratives with which they disagree. This approach could enrich the development of inclusive literacy practices that better serve multilingual students from diverse cultural and linguistic contexts.

This article explores the underpinning assumptions about the changing definition and parameters of early reading that are contained in successive UK Departments for Education (DfE, DfES, DfEE) documentation since 1995 and in Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) reports and official blogs during the same period. It employs a chronological presentation of key phrases within policy documents and grey literature to identify and track the changing attitudes held by the writers of these documents regarding the skills deemed to be officially important in learning to read. The article acknowledges and explores the contested nature of the field. The exploration of these policy documents demonstrates that although UK National Curricula since 1995, including the current one, have consistently identified that skills of early reading are multifaceted, this contrasts strongly with policy, guidance and inspection frameworks in the same period, which have increasingly sat, and continue to sit, within a view of reading underpinned by rigid and narrow definitions of early reading in which phonics is pre-eminent.

How can our students' authentic, every day social interactions provide us with opportunities to critically self-reflect and examine our practices as educators? In the summer of 2011, a book character, ‘Shawn Trenell’, was born, based upon characteristics of former students from my early teaching experiences, and I began recounting personal lessons gained following my first year of teaching. These reflections led to journaling and then to unexpected authorship. This paper is (1) an analysis of my critical self-reflective process as a former elementary educator and (2) the analysis of my two-book series, including the character development, each book's story plot and their associated moral/themes. Through this self-study inquiry, my aim is to emphasise the importance of teachers critically examining their own practice and to highlight the process of incorporating relevant experiences (to both students and teachers) into story form to serve as models for engaging readers, writers and preservice (PSTs) in authentic and meaningful ways.

The Writing Realities Framework, developed by Young, Ferguson, Kaufman and Govender (2022), provides a robust structure for understanding and developing writing pedagogies which can empower all young people to express their unique perspectives, cultural capital and lived experiences through writing. It supports a more community-focused and identity-affirming approach to writing instruction. This special issue presents a collection of articles that have engaged with this theoretical framework in diverse and thought-provoking ways, highlighting the key themes of writer-identity, critical literacies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, multiliteracies, translanguaging and intertextuality The collection emphasises the range and complexity of educators' and young people's writing practices, encouraging scholars, policymakers and teachers to consider new ways of framing their research and practice.

There is an assumption that English teachers identify as writers. This article explores the stories of three secondary preservice English teachers, their descriptions of their writing experiences and their self-perceived vulnerabilities around writing. These narratives originated in a broader research study into the writer identities of preservice English teachers. Situated with a qualitative paradigm, the research design aligned with a relativist ontological approach. An interpretivist epistemology led to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Participants completed qualitative surveys, drew ‘writing rivers’ and reflected on these in semistructured interviews. A story map represents participants' writing journeys over time. Findings suggest that participants associated writing with exposure from an early age. Assessment of writing made participants visible; they experienced negative feedback on their writing as personal criticism and disconnected from writing. Faced with teaching writing as preservice teachers, participants encountered the same pedagogical practices that they found challenging as students. Reflection on their writing histories led participants to explore the source of their writing vulnerabilities and how these were ‘carried’ with them into classroom practice. Findings illustrate how assessment-driven writing pedagogies can erode the writer identities of young people over time. The research therefore has implications for educational practice in a variety of contexts.

Existing research about English literature texts that are studied at secondary schools in developed countries suggests that teachers' choices can be determined by, for example, school policies, access to books, teachers' reasons for teaching literature, the degree of autonomy they have in choosing text and the influence that canonical literature has in their teaching contexts. Comparable knowledge about teachers' choices of English literature texts, the contexts in which literature is taught and teachers' experiences of teaching the books they choose in Trinidad and Tobago is scarce. To address this, 84 schools were surveyed, and English teachers and heads of department were interviewed. Although many of the findings echoed previous studies conducted in developed countries, several new factors emerged, which may be ascribed to the local context. Chief among these were teachers' preference for multi-genre anthologies, a high proportion of government schools choosing only one book in Year 8, the popularity of Caribbean texts and the significant impact of economic considerations on text selection. The study discusses the potentially negative consequences of some text selection criteria and questions the applicability of some contemporary research recommendations to Trinidad and Tobago.

The purpose of the following case study was to examine the daybooks of 3 fourth-grade writers who autonomously determined the content they included across the pages of their composition books. Three themes emerged from an analysis of their daybooks: (1) Students used their daybooks to engage their writing process; (2) students used their daybooks to draft in a variety of genres and (3) students used their daybooks as a space for reflection. This study suggests that, when provided with the proper conditions for writing, students use their daybooks in multiple ways to support them as writers.

Partly as result of the predominant ‘narrow’ view of writing in England's recent school curriculum and assessment, current primary school pupils often hold a skills-oriented view of ‘good’ writing for a substantially longer period than has traditionally been reported in the literature. This makes it difficult for teachers to promote and engage children with writing in the classroom and—crucially for the present paper—limits pupils' awareness of the wide stock of resources they can exploit in their practice, thus impacting on the development of their writer identity. This paper reports on the pupil impact of a teacher-led project on ‘good’ writing constructs carried out in Merseyside schools in spring 2023. Results from this mixed methods study suggest that classroom activities aimed at developing in pupils a holistic concept of ‘good’ school writing provides children with greater awareness of the notion of ‘choice’ in the writing process, hence fostering self-efficacy mechanisms that encourage the resourcefulness, creativity and individuality essential to writer identity creation.

Writing workshop, as conceived by Donald Graves and other US researchers in the 1980s, positively transformed the writing instruction of many teachers. However, others experienced considerable challenges as they tried to create workshop classrooms. This article examines the three historical conditions that defined workshop: (1) choice, (2) time and (3) response, highlighting several factors that may lead to unsuccessful practices as teachers attempt to implement them. Then, based on an analysis of the early work of the original researchers and the practices of exemplary workshop educators, it identifies three other conditions—(4) organization and management to promote classroom movement, (5) community-building to create a shared culture of writers and (6) living a publicly literate life—that appear to support the successful implementation of the original three conditions. Finally, pulling from an analysis of the contemporary work of current workshop researchers and educators, it identifies one final condition that was conspicuously not represented in the early work but nonetheless appears essential in connecting and contextualizing all conditions: (7) the introduction of writing purpose to promote empowerment and equity. Together, these conditions form a new and more holistic theoretical model that may now be examined, interpreted, implemented in practice and evolved.

In its diverse forms, authentic writing carries the potential to connect literacy practice to an author's ‘real world’. While contemporary approaches to authentic writing instruction—advocating writer-centred, intertextual and culturally relevant productions—are most often explored in formal learning contexts like classrooms, this paper seeks to amplify the mentorship strategies employed within an informal youth centre learning space in Montreal, Canada. The following research questions have guided this work: (1) How do adult mentors leverage authentic writing principles to support adolescents' participation within two writing-based programmes developed in a youth centre context? (2) How do the interests, perspectives and backgrounds of adult mentors shape the mentorship strategies they choose to employ? Data collected and analysed through participant-focused ethnographic approaches assist the author in revealing how adult writing mentors draw from their own cultural, linguistic and embodied experiences to foster interest-driven, culturally sustaining and community-based writing opportunities for adolescents. The four key mentorship themes emerging through this research—centring the essential role of writing journeys, identities and communities while acknowledging several barriers to authentic writing—advocate drawing from the rich literacy practices thriving within informal contexts to inform contemporary writing curricula.