This article describes literacy practices and outdoor activities in high school English classrooms--framed as critical rambling, a pedagogy seeking to raise awareness of issues like climate justice--with illustrations from a dissertation of teacher research and additional student work.

Scholars from various disciplines have theorized a relationship between reading fiction and empathy. Research in cognitive studies suggests that understanding fiction requires Theory of Mind, or the cognitive ability to understand the feelings and motivations of others. Some studies build on this research to suggest reading fiction helps to…

This article considers high school students' relationship to poetry through a small-scale qualitative study guided by the question: what happens to student perceptions of poetry when class begins each day with a poem? As a former teacher and current teacher educator, I conducted a series of interviews with a small group of my former students…

This article serves as an in-practice guide to help teachers facilitate the creation of a dance piece using the five-paragraph essay format to explore themes through motif and manipulation. It is an outline of the process that begins with the selection of a theme and the development of a motif to represent that theme. It compares the development…

This study introduces a novel approach for predicting student engagement levels in a language-based AI curriculum. The curriculum was integrated into English Language Arts classrooms, in which 106 students from five classes participated five web-based machine learning and text mining modules for 2 weeks. Sentiment and categorical analyses,…

Critical approaches to literature in secondary English require greater attention to narrative discourse. In this conceptual article, I provide interpretative tools from contemporary narratology and demonstrate their critical potential for high school English. In particular, I outline critical literacy's vital but overattentive focus on the…

This study examined the effect of specific disciplinary actions such as in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, and expulsion on student achievement in public high schools. School discipline data from 1291 students educated within a school district in Tennessee were obtained and analyzed against Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System…

The purpose of this quantitative observational study was to identify the differences in high school student test scores on the ACT ELA composite tests and ACT math test for students attending school in union and unified districts in Arizona. Arizona has two options for public high school districts, 9-12 (union) and K-12 (unified). The researcher…

This dissertation examines the connection between the English Language Arts Professional Learning Community, data analysis, and research-based instructional strategies to improve students reading levels, as measured by the Pennsylvania Literature Keystone Exam at an Urban High School. It is a mixed-method study. Data were collected from 9th -12th…

This study aimed to investigate the impact of implementing Open Educational Resources (OER) course materials on student engagement and achievement in a 10th grade English Language Arts (ELA) classroom at a high-poverty, rural school district. Research suggests that the implementation of OER materials in a K-12 setting can positively impact student…

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…

The purpose of this action research study was to evaluate the effect of a robotics-based intervention on empathy for students enrolled in secondary English and literature courses. Empathy, as a concept, is an integral component of reading comprehension and student motivation. A decline in reported individual levels of empathy among young adults…

This study explores how English Language Arts (ELA) teachers' experiences with grief shape their approach to teaching tragic texts that explore themes of loss and tragedy. By analyzing teachers' narratives, we examine how their emotional responses to personal losses influence their pedagogical practices when dealing with tragic literature.…

This qualitative study explored high school students' engagement with a unit where video games and video game materials were incorporated into an English Language Arts classroom. Over several weeks, students engaged with video game content and composed their own video games using the free online platform, Scratch. The purpose of the study was to…

Higher-order thinking has been promoted in the American classroom for several decades. Summative assessments have the dual role of ascertaining the student's proficiency and also providing them with opportunities to employ various cognitive behaviors and to offer them with opportunities to demonstrate their ability to think in complex ways. The…