Insistence on verbal literacy as a key skill occurs throughout education. There needs to be a greater awareness of literacy as a sensory capacity: creative voices are seen, heard and performed. I argue that all the senses form embodied understanding, and obstructing this flow can impede learning. This article questions how we can use embodied,…

This theoretical research article delves into the necessity of embracing digital pedagogy as a transformative force for girls' education in contemporary India. This study is grounded in three main objectives: (1) assessing the current state of girls' education in India, (2) exploring the potential benefits of digital pedagogy, and (3)…

Thoughtfully planned professional development (PD) that fosters teacher agency has the potential to impact student agency in the literacy classroom. Drawing on a body of research with 82 teachers across multiple schools and clinical settings, this article first presents findings from a variety of PD contexts that are synthesized to highlight four…

The authors examined the dimensions of reading engagement for rural ninth-grade students who participated in a supplemental literacy intervention for students who struggled with school-based reading. Using a comparative case study approach, researchers investigated the ways in which engagement was characterized and undermined within the context of…

This article examines the power of composing images as students construct identities and shape their own worlds. It illustrates student empowerment through agency, intellectual engagement, and community investment and suggests that composing with images forms a bridge back to alphabetic-centric composing.

Drawing on the work of Paulo Freire, Morrell argues for critical, humanizing inquiry spaces in which literacy teachers learn with and from one another. However, he points to critical race theory and poses important questions, for example, wondering whether empowered spaces for teachers are transferred into empowerment for students.

The College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards published by the National Council for the Social Studies advocates the need for students not just to acquire and produce knowledge, but also to live a life of active engagement in the workings of our democracy. Dimension Four of the C3 Framework articulates this…

Sara's story reports the effects of an experimental intervention applying knowledge-building principles for learning, as well as the unanticipated improvement of literacy skills of students with IEPs. According to the author, if you believe that knowledge is socially and collaboratively constructed, as the author does, then an overwhelming…

In this paper, I first examine how the dominant view of children as incompetent is constructed in the field of sociology, highlighting the constructions of them as playful, vulnerable and passive. Then, I deconstruct these dominant constructions and argue that they do not do children justice. To restore justice to children through reconstructing…

"Koladeras" are women who use call and response in impromptu songs that may contain proverbs, stories about the community, their life experiences, and who and what they see in their world from their own perspective. Via qualitative methods of (auto)ethnography, personal and life story narratives, and interviews, I look at how…

Educating young people to give them alternatives to violence for their futures is explored in this examination of the causes of violence in schools and society and possible solutions. The challenge is one of moving from cultures that condone violence and intolerance of difference to cultures that are both more tolerant and more peaceful. Part I of…

Rereading the history of basic writing can serve as a context for and a springboard to a reading of selected contemporary basic writing textbooks. For critical scrutiny, articles by Joseph Harris and David Bartholomae offer retellings of the history of basic writing, retellings that challenge the more "heroic" tellings that have become…