We live in a society where standard accents are highly valued. Generally, people who speak with a Standard English accent are seen through a positive lens linguistically; those whose English is accented are stigmatized. Accent discrimination affects linguistic minorities from diverse linguistic and ethnic backgrounds, including foreign-accented…

Members of an Innovation School committee from Florida Gulf Coast University and the School District of Lee County share their individual and collective perspectives on designing anew traditional public school as an inquiry-based innovation school through an articulated partnership. Perspectives are shared through the lens of narrative inquiry and…

This article examines the use of narrative identity analysis of the life-story theory approach to guide the career paths of middle grades teachers. It presents the views of middle grades teachers and education students on the integral role of narrative and on the impact of life-story approach in their careers and their identities. It explores how…

The purpose of this article is to share wisdom collected from the field and offer a view of meaningful learning, explore the tensions that exist in educators' work, and invite conversation about the future of educational practice. The anecdotes and data come from a series of research studies conducted from 2001 to 2011 by a cadre of middle grades…

Until recently, qualitative research has made limited use of visual sources, particularly visual texts (drawing, painting or photographs), but also including multimodal data (video and web-based) and visual data (tables, graphs, charts, etc.). Thus, discussions of ethics and evidence in this area have lagged behind those related to textual data,…

This is a personal account of the author's naivete, growth, and hope as a literacy educator after she left her position as a university professor to teach reading to young adolescents. She describes how her experience and academic expertise did not fully prepare her for the realities of working in a middle school and how she became more aware of…

As a university instructor and a language arts middle school teacher, the authors have been working collaboratively for the last three years. This article describes their collaborative efforts, including what they have learned about their students and about the process of learning through the work they have done together. To introduce their…