In this study, we explore discussions of literature in a high school English Language Arts (ELA) classroom, examining how students read rhetorically. Reading rhetorically considers the ethical effects of narrative content as it is mediated through character dialogue and action, narrator discourse, and the author's organization: a narrative as a…

Purpose: With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), it is important to consider how young people are making sense of these tools in their everyday lives. Drawing on critical postdigital approaches to learning and literacy, this study aims to center the experiences and perspectives of young people who encounter and…

Rurality is an identified point of disadvantage in measures such as the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) and school resourcing models. However, socioeconomic disadvantage is commonly used as an explanation for lower average student achievement in rural locations. Thus, policies are often directed towards reducing disadvantage…

Purpose: Digital texts are increasingly widespread and research is needed on how students use digital texts, particularly in school-based classwork. The purpose of this study is to challenges persistent myths about young people's affinity with digital tools by investigating the factors that condition or limit the ways students interact with and…

Culturally responsive instruction scholarship often presents a binary standard that teachers either satisfy or do not, a determination largely based on perceptions of observed practice. Yet, conclusions about teachers' cultural responsiveness are dubious when researchers do not account for teachers' intent. Conceptualizing cultural responsiveness…

An analysis of praxis can inform how teachers treat lumpen masculinities performed by young Black men, who are some of the most socially defiant and alienated from US schooling and upward mobility, specifically, and other cisgender boys of color, generally. To make sense of heteropatriarchy, toxic masculinity, and urban misogyny in the classroom,…

Building on youth literacies in formal learning spaces is a promising direction for asset-based literacy learning designs. However, in response to ways that academic spaces can deaden passionate literacy study, it is important to attend to the resulting affective flows of such practices. This study traces how affect was sustained and dampened in a…

This article critiques a classroom encounter between a Black student, Richard, and a white student, Nick, that complicated the white English teacher, Mr. Turner's, attempt to facilitate a discussion about racial progress in America. Students positioned their bodies on a continuum between 1, no racial progress since the 1930s, and 10, full racial…

What resources do students draw on to produce literary theory in the contemporary high school English classroom? This interactional sociolinguistic study traces the production and distribution of Lexical, Structural, and Thematic resources across genre chains in reading, writing, and discussing literary theory during an intensive 3-week short…

Purpose: Unlike formalist and functional approaches to literacy and teaching writing, a languaging theory approach centers on the dynamic and interpersonal nature of writing. The purpose of this study was to determine students' ability to engage in explicit reflection about their languaging actions in response to their personal narrative writing…

Kentucky offers college preparatory transition courses in math, reading, and English to grade 12 students. The courses are designed as one possible intervention for students who do not meet state college readiness benchmarks in one or more of those subjects on the ACT in grade 11. This study updates a previous Regional Educational Laboratory (REL)…

This study examined adolescents' perspectives on their multimodal composing goals and designs when creating digital projects in the context of an English Language Arts class. Sociocultural and social semiotics theoretical frameworks were integrated to understand six 12th grade students' viewpoints when composing three multimodal products--a…

We explore how the languaging of everyday life in classrooms promulgates conceptions of personhood. We use the term "languaging" to argue for a shift from conceptions of language as a noun to languaging as a verb, a view of language as inseparable from and constitutive of the actions and reactions of people in response to each other. It…

This paper offers insights into how the teaching of queer topics in English language arts classes can be reframed by bridging the goals, practices and conceptual tools of queer theory to literacy teaching. Drawing on an ethnographic classroom study, which explored a 13-week high school Gay and Lesbian Literature course, this paper discusses how…

Over the years that I have taken secondary school students to the theatre, the the digital revolution has moved through schools, classrooms, and even theatres, calling into question my goal of contributing positively to students' identity formation through exposure to live plays. Responding to calls to examine the ways in which young people's…