One of the most notable aspects of democracy in schooling lies in the challenge of schools to prepare individuals with the skills to participate and deliberate with others who have varying beliefs and worldviews. Deliberation and dialogue are seen as core components for academic achievement and cross-cultural connections between English language…

Drawing on experience and the emerging results of a research project, this article examines the role of play, in particular child-initiated play, when learning languages in pre-primary settings. It begins by characterizing play and highlights the importance of a balanced relationship between adult-led and child-initiated play activities. It…

This report presents the results of the Fall 2015 Developmental Education Report for the Maricopa County Community College District. Section 1 of the report provides numbers of students enrolled in one or more developmental courses in the Fall 2015 Term. Section 2 Deals with placement. The placement and performance sections of this report…

In March, 2016, the state of New Mexico established a Remediation Task Force to examine remediation reform efforts across the state's higher education institutions. On March 11, the Task Force met for the "New Mexico Corequisite Remediation at Scale Policy Institute" in order to learn about the results of the latest national reform…

Each year thousands of graduates in Australia take up their first position in schools, eager to teach students and determined to make a difference in their lives. They are overwhelmingly motivated by a desire to "do good" and "be good". Often they have been imagining "their" class and "their" teaching for…

This essay explores the problematic nature of an enforced monolingual culture promoted by the current Conservative-led UK government. It comments upon the paradoxical nature of the 2014 curriculum that promotes heritage texts and "proper" English, when such poets embraced a Bakhtinian tolerance of languages. It focuses primarily upon the…

"Some are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon them." "Twelfth Night," Act 3 Scene 4. This article examines the differences and similarities between two faculty members as they discuss their entry into the academy after successfully teaching in secondary schools. Both brought with them the…

This paper is about the classroom use of digital literacies. It describes using a hypermedia-authoring program with middle-years students at an Australian secondary school. Classroom environments were created in which collaborative and innovative group work built on technical facilities and expertise developed by students outside of school. The…

This paper suggests how the "weird fiction" of H.P. Lovecraft might be mobilised within secondary English classrooms to examine aspects of visual literacy, literary style, narrative form and intertextuality. The approach that is outlined is characterised, after Lovecraft's famous monster, as a "Cthulhuic literacy" and is…

Drawing on observational evidence of two classes working on "Romeo and Juliet," one in England and the other in Palestine, this essay explores the nature of knowledge in relation to English as a school subject. It asserts the importance of paying attention to the resources that students, situated in culture and history, bring with them…

In this article, the author presents two snapshots that document how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) influenced her writing instruction. She uses Dewey's concept of inquiry to frame the disastrous effects that high-stakes testing can have on the students with the greatest needs. Finally, she looks ahead to consider how the Common Core text exemplars…

What is the extent to which marriage/couple and family therapy (M/CFT) journals address transgender issues and how many of them say they are inclusive of transgender persons when they are not? To answer these queries, a content analysis was conducted on articles published in M/CFT literature from 1997 through 2009. Of the 10,739 articles examined…

Drawing on findings from three qualitative studies, this article explores the distinct professional identities of two-year college English faculty. We examine full-time faculty patterns of engagement with professional organizations, their assertion of professional authority in institutional decision making, and the role of organizational…

Given the Cartesian influence in mainstream American education, writing instruction has come to reflect a dualistic worldview, with the writer understood as an autonomous observer/knower. As such, writing instructors have the potential to convey problematic lessons about the self as entirely separate from the world. This essay delineates a…

Appropriation, transformation and remix are increasingly recognized as significant aspects of digital literacy. This article considers how one form of digital remix--the video remix--might be used in classrooms to introduce critical conversations about representation, appropriation, creativity and copyright. The first half of the article explores…