The purpose of this quantitative, descriptive, comparative study was to investigate the effect of teacher retention on the academic assessment of 8th-grade middle school students. The South Carolina College- and Career-Ready Assessments (SC READY) examination measured students' English/Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics academic performance. This…

In this article, the author argues that living literacies--relational, embodied forms of literacy engagement--are an integral component of literacy engagement and hold the potential to disrupt and reconfigure the power structures embedded within schooled literacy. Drawing on affect theory and rhizomatic theory, the author analyzes youths' literacy…

Research that looks at the nuances of teaching English language arts in rural secondary classrooms is a growing field. Yet, there are limited studies focusing on rural secondary classrooms in the Southeastern United States, Georgia specifically. The primary goal of this project is to understand what it looks like to teach English in rural…

This article discusses the legacy of Fred Rogers, and bridges the connections of his work in early childhood development to the needs of older students. The author draws upon her own experiences as a child watching "Mister Roger's Neighborhood," and as a teacher who has tried to incorporate several of his ideas into her own high school…

This interpretivist study investigated the perspectives of Year 10 students who struggled with writing and who attended schools in areas with a low socio-educational index on learning environments for the English learning area. Specifically, students were asked what they believed a positive learning environment in the English classroom to be, how…

This is a case study of classroom interaction of SSS1 English and Igbo in reading comprehension at Premier Secondary School, Aba, Nigeria. The purpose is to determine whether interaction in reading comprehension in English and Igbo is constrained by language in terms of interaction patterns, style and culture. The class sessions were described…

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…

This paper comprises a re-reading of the 1955 novel by John Wyndham, "The Chrysalids," in conversation with philosopher Rosi Braidotti's formation of critical posthumanism. The author argues that such re-readings of curricular fixtures within secondary English classrooms constitutes a necessary pragmatic intervention in a school system…

Purpose: This study aims to explore three methods of soliciting student-to-teacher feedback in a tenth-grade English classroom. Design/methodology/approach: The foundational inquiry asks what type of instructions -- sentence stems, open-response or directed-response -- yields the most honest and actionable responses when soliciting feedback. The…

The Alaska Science Assessment is administered annually statewide to students in grades 5, 8 and 10 and is a summative assessment designed to measure a student's knowledge of the "K-12 Science Standards for Alaska," which were adopted in June 2019. Summative assessments are designed to provide a snapshot of student, school, or program…

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…

In this article, the researchers employ a linguistically informed approach to close reading that teaches a moral dilemma through an autobiographical short story. The approach, based on systemic functional linguistics, uses genre analysis that can draw students' attention to the structure, vocabulary, and grammar within literary texts, helping them…

ChatGPT and generative AI technologies have infiltrated our learning spaces, and, as a result, schools may be changed forever. While some educators may seek to ban the use of chatbots, motivated by a fear of the rampant plagiarism the technology might invite, I, however, write this dissertation with the intent of finding uses for AI as a…

Grounded in solid theory with new field-tested classroom activities, the fourth edition of "Critical Encounters in Secondary English" continues to help teachers integrate the lenses of contemporary literary theory into practices that have always defined good pedagogy. The most significant change for this edition is the addition of a full…