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…

In this study, we explore discussions of literature in a high school English Language Arts (ELA) classroom, examining how students read rhetorically. Reading rhetorically considers the ethical effects of narrative content as it is mediated through character dialogue and action, narrator discourse, and the author's organization: a narrative as a…

This study aims to understand how women's voices can be empowered in a high school English Language Arts (ELA) class. Through the use of female authors and female protagonists in the classroom texts, this study seeks to understand if implementing female-driven texts enhances female students' literary experiences, empowers the personal identities…

The PreACT® suite of assessments (PreACT® 8/9, PreACT®, and PreACT® Secure™) can be used to monitor students' progress toward college and career readiness. Scores are classified into one of three readiness levels based on chances of meeting the ACT College Readiness Benchmark. This data byte presents the updated score ranges for each readiness…

Purpose: With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), it is important to consider how young people are making sense of these tools in their everyday lives. Drawing on critical postdigital approaches to learning and literacy, this study aims to center the experiences and perspectives of young people who encounter and…

This study delves into the disparity in academic performance between students of color and their white counterparts, the former performing three to five years behind. To address this issue, a qualitative and interpretive descriptive study was conducted to investigate how schools address learning opportunities for students of color, employing…

Both of us were drawn into the writing assessment field initially through our lived experiences as schoolteachers. We worked in radically different contexts -- Martin was head of a languages department and teacher of French and German in the late 1990s in the UK, and David was a Grade 12 teacher of Academic English in Alberta, Canada, at the turn…

Rurality is an identified point of disadvantage in measures such as the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) and school resourcing models. However, socioeconomic disadvantage is commonly used as an explanation for lower average student achievement in rural locations. Thus, policies are often directed towards reducing disadvantage…

Purpose: Digital texts are increasingly widespread and research is needed on how students use digital texts, particularly in school-based classwork. The purpose of this study is to challenges persistent myths about young people's affinity with digital tools by investigating the factors that condition or limit the ways students interact with and…

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…

Culturally responsive instruction scholarship often presents a binary standard that teachers either satisfy or do not, a determination largely based on perceptions of observed practice. Yet, conclusions about teachers' cultural responsiveness are dubious when researchers do not account for teachers' intent. Conceptualizing cultural responsiveness…

An analysis of praxis can inform how teachers treat lumpen masculinities performed by young Black men, who are some of the most socially defiant and alienated from US schooling and upward mobility, specifically, and other cisgender boys of color, generally. To make sense of heteropatriarchy, toxic masculinity, and urban misogyny in the classroom,…

Building on youth literacies in formal learning spaces is a promising direction for asset-based literacy learning designs. However, in response to ways that academic spaces can deaden passionate literacy study, it is important to attend to the resulting affective flows of such practices. This study traces how affect was sustained and dampened in a…

Research has found that directly teaching students to question positively affects academic outcomes. Although theoretically questioning is believed to foster numerous "noncognitive" outcomes, relatively few studies have considered the impact of direct instruction in questioning on students' curiosity and related motivational constructs.…

This article critiques a classroom encounter between a Black student, Richard, and a white student, Nick, that complicated the white English teacher, Mr. Turner's, attempt to facilitate a discussion about racial progress in America. Students positioned their bodies on a continuum between 1, no racial progress since the 1930s, and 10, full racial…