Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy最新文献

In this design-based research study, in-service educators participated in a grant-funded professional development (PD) project to increase district capacity for multilingual learner instruction. Initial data indicated teacher comfort with technology but difficulty tailoring it to the unique multiliterate practices of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Based on teachers' needs and a departmental goal, a modification of a digital escape room (the JEDI Library Escape) was designed and implemented to teach principles of culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSPs) and multiliteracies. Results indicate that infusing CSP and multiliteracies into a digital escape room as PD enacted critical reflection, increased multiliteracies awareness, and created an overall enjoyable experience while shifting teachers' holistic impressions of multilinguals and their caregivers. Future iterations of the JEDI escape will include more opportunities for applying multiliteracies and JEDI principles to classroom settings, followed by opportunities for peer reflection through coursework.

This study examines the ways pre-service English language arts teachers (PSTs) conceptualized activism and experimented with visual and multimodal approaches to composing about activism. Drawing on qualitative methods, we examined 22 PSTs' graphic narratives completed as part of their teacher preparation coursework, and center our discussion on three focal students' compositions. We frame our inquiry within the scholarship on critical literacies to address the research question: How do PSTs draw on multimodality and comic conventions to compose graphic narratives about activism? Findings suggest that these focal students leveraged the affordances of multimodal composing to engage readers in their narratives about activism. Specifically, PSTs created multiple perspectives and movement as rhetorical moves that influenced how readers interacted with both their graphic compositions and the activist themes developed therein. After a discussion of the findings, we highlight the potential of PSTs' activist literacies and corresponding implications for the field.

This article examines African American rhetorical feature use in the secondary literacy classroom. It explores the historical evolution and pedagogical implications of incorporating African American rhetorical features into classroom writing instruction. The article discusses the historical evolution of African American Language and its position in the American literacy classroom. It also proposes actions educators can take in order to preserve African American Language-speaking students' rhetorical style, including acknowledgment of African American Language, researching the evolution of African American Language in literacy education, and steps to support professional racialized linguistic self-reflection. It also reviews recent literature and provides examples of African American rhetorical features educators can leverage while implementing instructional strategies that affirm African American Language-speaking students. Understanding African American rhetorical feature's role in literacy education is crucial for developing equitable instructional practices that respect and affirm students' diverse linguistic backgrounds. This article offers valuable insight for secondary and middle school educators, policymakers, and researchers interested in language, race, literacy, and education. This article concludes that integrating culturally specific strategies into literacy practices can enhance student learning, confidence, and promote cultural equity. It calls for further research and policy development to support culturally affirming written literacy practices in schools.

Language and culture hold power and significant connections to students' identities. However, these connections are often minimized, especially for students from diverse racial-ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds who are neither white nor monolingual speakers of English. In literacy instruction, we often see complete disregard and devaluation for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students' home languages, dialects, and cultures as a resource for their development of English. Many home languages that students bring with them to the classroom do not match the language of texts traditionally considered academic. These texts often contain complex language structures in English that do not match students' oral language and language structures students must learn to navigate. Students who are still learning foundational skills must be given access to these complex language structures to access rigorous academic content, which can otherwise serve as a gatekeeper to college and career opportunities. In this paper, we argue for the essential role of joyful, culturally, and linguistically sustaining, and grade-level foundational skills instruction in literacy education. We demonstrate why and how teachers of adolescent students, particularly those who have not yet secured foundational skills in English, can leverage students' cultural and linguistic assets to build the knowledge needed to access the complex language of academic texts. Additionally, we provide a vignette to illustrate instructional routines that classroom teachers can use to support students in building their foundational skills in a joyful, culturally, and linguistically sustaining, and grade level. Through these efforts, we aim to deepen teachers' understanding of how language and culture can be leveraged to enhance learning and honor the linguistic and cultural diversity students bring to the classroom. We conclude with implications for practice and research.

The 2016 presidential election marked the beginning of a so-called “post-truth era” in which mis- and disinformation have contributed to political polarization and violence, the acceleration of global warming, and thousands of preventable deaths. In this paper, I draw on the results of a 2-week, practitioner inquiry-informed case study in an 11th-grade English language arts (ELA) classroom situated in a small, conservative Midwest town to explore the affordances of integrating two theoretical frameworks, one rooted in media literacy and one in epistemic cognition, in planning and implementing a unit designed to support students' critical engagement with digital media texts related to climate change. The findings point to the need for a new framework that draws on insights from both sociocultural and cognitive approaches to literacy. Implications for classroom practice include the importance of teaching students how to evaluate their positionality using platforms they already engage, creating authentic epistemic environments, leading students in explorations of different ways of knowing, helping them understand knowledge systems and processes, and promoting epistemic virtues and autonomy.

The editors of the special issue share themes from the research about how to develop foundational literacy skills for adolescents with a culturally and linguistically sustaining lens. The authors define foundational literacy skills and share a framework for supporting learners' development of these skills with culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogy at the center of planning and instruction.

This commentary explores the nuanced approaches to literacy instruction in middle and high school classrooms, emphasizing the integration of skilled and strategic reading. The commentary underscores the distinction between skilled readers' effortless navigation through familiar texts and the conscious employment of reading strategies when faced with complex texts. It draws attention to components of instruction within English Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies by drawing illustrative examples from three teachers' classrooms. These examples illustrate how meaning-, vocabulary-, and code-based approaches overlap and can be integrated in a multifaceted approach to literacy instruction, which is sensitive to disciplinary demands and student diversity. An integrated approach is essential for equipping adolescents with the sociocognitive tools necessary for academic and lifelong literacy. Instructional recommendations are provided.

In this article, we argue that the goal of reading literary text is the creation of interpretation, and we advocate for a research-based disciplinary literacy heuristic that centers on reading and interpreting literary text. The heuristic serves as a guide for designing instruction that incorporates important instructional principles for English/Language Arts: acceptance of literary ambiguity, use of collaborative discussion, and adoption of asset-based approaches. We unpack the heuristic and recommend instructional approaches that center student voices in the process of interpreting literary texts, supporting them to learn not only how literature works, but also how to engage in their own interpretations.

Supporting foundational skills in adolescents such as word-level knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and morphemic knowledge are indeed vital. However, these skills alone and in isolation are not enough and do not develop without supporting students' sense of agency during literacy instruction. In this commentary, the authors explore student agency and the teaching of foundational skills to create engaged and skilled adolescent readers and writers.