In this article, Michelle Ann Abate examines the typographical features of the comics and graphic novels frequently finding their way into English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms and challenges the viewpoint that they are secondary to prose-only texts, arguing instead that many comics can be seen as requiring more advanced levels of literacy…

This article examines the deeper purposes behind the teaching of creative writing. To extend an analogy created by William Blake in his poem 'The Tyger', its furnaces are examined and its 'deadly terrors' clasped. It re-interprets the different views of teaching English, as drawn up in the United Kingdom's Cox Report. It argues that these views…

This article focuses on Mr. Kurt, a white, first-year English teacher in an all-white context who has chosen to teach his students about whiteness, white supremacy, white privilege, and the many ways institutionalized racism is enacted in daily life. I center this article on classroom scenarios that highlight the challenges embedded in dealing…

Purpose: Contemporary standards-based reforms to teaching and teacher education are characterised by appeals to technical orientations to teacher professionalism. In addition, the standardisation agenda has targeted literacy education as a focus for interventions. This has highlighted an incongruence between standardised approaches to literacy and…

This paper explores the application of texture and textual attractors within a cognitive stylistic pedagogy for English teachers. Texture, defined as the feeling of building and experiencing a fictional world, is here taken up as a facilitative way of thinking about how reading, language, experience and cognition operate in the classroom. On the…

Of the 17 African American students that started in one-level below developmental English, only 1 (6%) ended up completing a 200-level English course in a three-year time period. A quick analysis of similar three-year cohorts at this college shows similar numbers, indicating that this is not an anomaly. African American students are not succeeding…

What to assign students to read in a literature course--or a writing course for that matter--is one of the core questions that faces those who teach English. This article imagines that the world itself is a text, and to teach students to become critically literate in the classroom has important consequences beyond it, arguing that English teachers…

Generation Z (Gen Z) represents something of a quintessence for the broken promises that now seem to make up the promise of higher education. But if despair indicates the dark side of generational malaise around things like civic engagement, community, and student learning, the dark humor that has emerged out of these generations points to modes…

The authors describe and analyze the strengths and challenges of a 10-year summer writing program that provides out-of-school academic support for adolescent writers who are not yet college and career ready. The two-week program takes place at the university where faculty and school district English language arts teachers work with approximately…

This paper considers the differential placements of social actors in the contemporary English university, as practices consistent with neoliberal ideologies become increasingly influential. It uses Layder's theory of 'social domains' and the first-hand experiences of the author to explore how the options available -- to students, those on…

Tracking and other practices of homogeneously grouping students by so-called ability level remain a norm in American classrooms, despite decades of research highlighting how they disserve and even harm student learning. Heterogeneous grouping, by contrast, benefits struggling learners, a conclusion supported by a substantial body of research. Some…

This essay draws from the experience of observing writing practices in English lessons from 2010-2019, to suggest that the influence of education policy during this phase prioritises preparation for examination questions above the imperatives of learner creativity or volition. Through discussion of ways in which the 'high stakes' examination…

The Umoja Community seeks to enhance the cultural and educational experiences of African-American and other students in California Community Colleges. Launched in 2006, over half of colleges across the system now involve students with this approach, which embraces an ethic of love and the deliberate engagement of participants in…

The centenary of the publication of "The Teaching of English in England" provides an opportunity to consider the current National Curriculum for English in England from a historical perspective. This paper reports on a hermeneutic study that explores the humanist values underpinning Newbolt's Report and how they shape the creative…

This essay draws on the work of Raymond Williams in identifying a shift from the attempt to have students engage with literary texts in personal terms to a concern, founded on theoretical innovation, that they should read at a more sophisticated level in order to discern the ideology of a given text. It argues that what Williams calls an…