This article is written for educators who serve as teachers, administrators, policy-makers in childcare settings, schools, classrooms, teacher preparation programs, programs that prepare educational researchers, and universities. Its purpose is to provide background, rationale, and support for individuals within those institutions to address the…

This paper documents a year in the life of an ESOL adult literacy teacher. It is a work of narrative inquiry, an examination of reflective teaching in action. As such, it includes commentary on the cycle of observation, reflection, research, and action. In particular, this narrative examines the relationship between literacy practice and…

This qualitative case study examines an after-school, bilingual family literacy programme that brought together several groups to form a community of practice (CoP) that worked to support the literacy development of English language learners and their families. We explored the following question: How do parents, teachers, students, and other…

This classroom ethnography documents the developing critical literacy pedagogy of an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instructor over the course of several terms. My research, which involved extensive collaboration with the EAP instructor, explores how specific classroom practices and discourses are enacted and mediated through dialogic…

Using pre- and post-tests, parent surveys, and student interviews, an Illinois kindergarten teacher examined the effects of authentic literacy experiences on her students' reading and writing activity levels, perceptions about literacy, and emergent literacy skills. Students responded positively to hands-on literacy experiences. Sample checklists…

The instructor of a course focusing on basic academic and job readiness skills for welfare recipients at the Goodwill Employment Help Center in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, conducted an action research project to determine whether developing personal mission statements would increase students' motivation in her course. As new students were accepted…

The Southwestern Pennsylvania Area Labor-Management Committee (SPALMC), which serves approximately 180 adult students annually, was experiencing inconsistencies in performance among its adult education staff. The problems included teachers arriving late 50% of the time and individualizing instruction only 70% of the time. To remedy these problems,…

Because an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teacher in Pennsylvania observed from the intake questionnaires completed by her students that many ESL students lack short- and long-term goal-setting skills, she undertook an action research project to help ESL students develop the short- and long-term goal-setting skills needed for educational,…