In this essay, I share how my own readings and understandings of Islam brought me closer to wider concepts of literacy. I use these views to guide my own research in literacy education to situate what literacy can be for youth in and around schools, knowing that literacy is still taught, assessed, and measured in singular ways.

This paper provides an overview of the Reading Wars as a site of discursive struggle. Using a digital sociological account of online events associated with the 2018 Phonics Debate hosted by the Australian Centre for Educational Research and the think tank the Centre for Independent Studies, this paper works to illuminate and challenge contemporary…

Practitioner Inquiry (PI) is the systematic, intentional study of one's professional practice. It makes reflective teaching visible and actionable. In this article, we reflect on our experiences as practitioner researchers across elementary, secondary, and teacher education and engage in critical conversations with one another to present a common…

This autoethnography explored my experiences in designing a nature-based literacy unit in Hawai'i. Whereas a small body of research highlights a positive relationship between nature-based experiences and literacy outcomes, there is minimal research on the planning process. I wanted to understand the experience of planning for nature-based literacy…

The emphasis in Ed.D. programs on professional knowledge and practical research means methodological training in these programs must prepare their candidates for the career demands graduates will likely encounter; practitioner research is well-suited to this task. Yet, the lower status traditionally accorded to practitioner research, along with an…

This article describes the learning and teaching approach taken within a Masters level specialism in Literacy Education within the context of learning some basics of undertaking qualitative investigation. Participants working as members of self-selected teams kept informal records of their activity, talk, reading, artefact creation, and archiving…

The Black Church is the oldest anti-racist institution in America. Having educated generations of Black families, birthed schools, universities, hospitals, financial institutions, various music genres, and nurtured numerous advocates and martyrs for freedom, including access to literacy, it is directly responsible for many of the most significant…

This article proposes the concept of "sociotextuality" to explain the accumulation of symbolic academic authority, with a specific focus on the evolving discourse of "multiliteracies." Examining how Western academia has asserted dominance in research about multimodal literacy practices despite the rich literacy traditions of…

The authors present a plan for classroom teachers and literacy professionals to conduct case studies, particularly of students' reading motivations and engagement. The authors argue for case study as a way for practitioners to contribute important knowledge to the field that is grounded in practitioners' deep, contextual understanding of the…

The aim of this research was to investigate how young students can be supported to use Socratic Seminar as a tool for critical thinking skills and deep, dialogic discussion of complex texts through use of picturebooks. In this teacher action research study, a first-time kindergarten classroom teacher supported by a university professor, enhanced…

Taoism, one of the oldest Eastern religious systems, has significantly influenced Chinese culture and society. Taoism centers around "The Tao" or "The Way," considered the ultimate source from which everything--both physical and non-physical, living and non-living--originates. It emphasizes inner self-cultivation through…

In this article we highlight analyses conducted in two qualitative literacy studies to discuss various implications of a blended, or hybrid, approach to multimodal analysis. By investigating several prominent frameworks commonly used together for the purpose of analyzing multimodal data, and describing our own experiences blending these…

This article is written for educators who serve as teachers, administrators, policy-makers in childcare settings, schools, classrooms, teacher preparation programs, programs that prepare educational researchers, and universities. Its purpose is to provide background, rationale, and support for individuals within those institutions to address the…

Despite the increasing levels of cultural and linguistic diversity represented in Australian classrooms, many universities do not adequately prepare teachers to teach English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D). Moreover, in neoliberal educational regimes, teaching tends to remain steadfastly focused on monolingual conceptions of literacy…

This multi-institutional, collaborative self-study explores how teacher educators learn to embed new literacies (NL) in teacher education coursework. Utilizing collaborative self-study methodology, seven faculty engaged in a year-long collaborative study focused on the incorporation of NL in preservice teacher education courses, meeting regularly…