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…

Purpose: Videogames are complex, meaningful and multimodal texts. This study aims to explore how students could learn about narratives from, and be engaged by, playing a videogame and how a teacher adapted their pedagogy to incorporate the young adult videogame (YA game) "What Remains of Edith Finch" into an English Language Arts…

This study investigates the interpretive approaches of three English teachers working in different grade levels with the same poem, Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." The researcher sought to learn what the teachers identified as most valuable about studying poetry in school, what interpretive approaches they employed…

Grouping students at secondary school based on attainment is a prevalent practice in English schools. Despite this, research has suggested that those placed in low attaining groups are disadvantaged by their placement. This study aimed to provide an account of student engagement, teacher interactions and pedagogical approaches employed by English…

Many high schools in the United States are contending with modest student writing achievement and looking for ways to enhance teachers' writing instruction. This is especially the case for schools deemed to be "underperforming" and struggling to reform writing pedagogy against an accumulation of teacher and leadership turnover, limited…

This study investigated the impact middle school tracking has on outcomes in high school and the factors associated with those outcomes. Utilizing data from a large, diverse school district, this quantitative study investigated the relationships between middle school and high school English course enrollment among 4,503 middle school students. The…

Purpose: Using a discourse analytic approach, the purpose of this paper is to examine how genre impacts white readers when reading about historic acts of racial violence. Specifically, this study explores one white high school student's stance-taking as she read an informational text and an eyewitness narrative about the Tulsa Race Massacre.…

Background: This case study examined the consequences of a literacy initiative designed to improve writing instruction for a high school under pressure to increase standardised test scores or face government oversight. Realities of underperforming schools, such as interruptions to instructional time, a focus on formulaic essay writing and…

Although small-group guided reading is traditionally an elementary school instructional practice, this study details how high school English teachers perceived its implementation in high school classrooms. As part of a larger, multiyear research project, this 2-year study examined a dual-level coaching professional learning program that included…

Today's hyper-partisan world makes civil discourse across differences seem almost impossible for many adults, let alone young people. U.S. public schools are tasked with educating our young people with the goal that they each can be productive members of society. High-school students participating in an intergroup dialogue on race as part of their…

This article features student perspectives on the role of personal writing in English class. Key findings and quotations are shared from two in-depth interviews with students who wrote exceptional personal essays as part of a narrative nonfiction unit in a 10th grade English class. Participants reported that writing personally generated more…

This paper explores students' engagement in reading poems, examining data on their self-perceptions of their confidence and competence in reading poems before, during, and after using the "I Notice" methodology as adapted from The Academy of American Poets' unit plan, "Noticing Poetry" (Slaby, 2017). The data was collected over…

The researcher conducted a formative experiment in a ninth- and a 10th-grade English classroom to observe a multiliteracies-based intervention implemented to improve high school students' arguments. Traditionally, argument is taught from a cognitive perspective, emphasizing concepts such as claims, evidence, and warrants. However, arguments are…

Background: College- and career-ready standards cite the "special place of argument writing" in preparing students to be college students, professionals, and engaged citizens in an information-rich society (NGA, 2010). To support these critical skills, the National Writing Project (NWP) developed the College, Career, and Community…

This study explores how two high school English language arts (ELA) teachers leveraged disciplinary literacy practices in their classrooms to help students explore their identities as citizens and imagine a more just and equitable democratic society. Using a figured worlds framework, the study articulates a sociocritical approach to civic literacy…