Historically, language instruction involving Black Language (BL) assumes a goal of eradication, particularly in school-sanctioned literacy practices. Language arts education for Black students must be liberatory, that is, antiracist and artful. The opportunities for English Language Arts (ELA) teachers to create, augment, and change the course of…

Recent research has demonstrated an intersectional approach to the study of differential item functioning (DIF). This approach expands DIF to account for the interactions between what have traditionally been treated as separate grouping variables. In this paper, we compare traditional and intersectional DIF analyses using data from a state testing…

Secondary ELA teachers use a variety of methods to engage, motivate, and teach their students literacy. Some methods include an emphasis on arts integration. One method of arts integration that has not been studied often in high school is the use of drama-based pedagogies (DBP). DBP are an innovative avenue to improving meaning-making and other…

This study was conducted with 11th- and 12th-grade high school students in western Florida. These students were not meeting the required achievement level in English language arts needed for graduation. This qualitative study investigated the barriers that hinder high school students' achievement in English language arts as a graduation…

This non-consecutive, three-year qualitative study explored the testing experiences of high school juniors who used Chromebooks to take their Smarter Balanced Standardized Assessments (SBAC) in English Language Arts and Mathematics. The study began in 2015, the first year in which SBAC was administered to students across California and other…

This paper extends research that looks at the intersection of multimodal composing and maker education. We present findings from a fourth iteration of a multidisciplinary classroom design study in which high school youth made digital comics based on literary novels in an 11th grade language arts classroom in a predominantly Hispanic, low-SES,…

Purpose: The pandemic has presented many new challenges tasking teachers with meeting the various social-emotional, academic and logistical needs of students in the midst of an ever-changing landscape. The onset of COVID-19 has drastically impacted schools and inevitably raised questions about nearly all aspects of teaching including but not…

This case study, which investigates twenty-four 11th-grade students of American literature, asks: What successes and challenges did students experience when reading "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" through a critical race theory (CRT)/critical Whiteness studies (CWS) lens? Findings reveal that applying a CRT/CWS lens helped students…

Technical literacy instruction and authentic learning opportunities need to be implemented through cross-curricular collaboration into secondary ELA curriculums to bridge the disconnect between K-12 education and the demands of the 21st-century workforce. The Common Core State Standards as well as newly adopted legislation in Maryland, Blueprint…

Students in the local school district have continued to score below the state average on the standardized American Literature end-of-course (EOC) assessment. It was unclear what 9th-, 10th-, and 11th-grade teachers in the district were doing to prepare students for success on the American Literature EOC. The purpose of this basic qualitative study…

In October 2023, the California Department of Education released test scores for all students in Grades 3-8 and 11 for the 2022-23 school year. These results represent an opportunity to analyze whether and to what extent student learning has rebounded after the dramatic declines in scores resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and related school…

The academic consequences of being popular are well established, but much less is known about the academic consequences of desiring to be popular. Extant research on popularity goals only focuses on the implications for students' school engagement, help-seeking, and academic achievement. The current study expands these findings by examining the…

The author describes a literacy activity that took place in an 11th-grade English language arts classroom: student-created role-play. Through a discussion of two such role-plays, the author explores how these performances illustrate students' engagement with raciolinguistic ideologies that marginalize certain speakers through the simultaneous…

The current quasi-experimental design study explored how students' choice of learning location model (either predominantly remote or hybrid) impacted their outcomes on academic assessments, school day attendance, and chronic absence in the 2020-2021 school year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyzing the student sample across three middle…

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study sought to understand the influences of teaching experience on perceptions of autonomy and competence on 7th through 12th grade English language arts teachers' text selection decisions through a survey and interviews. The findings of this explanatory sequential design survey study could affirm…