Contemporary research in critical multicultural education and cultural studies has demonstrated how race, class, gender, and sexual orientation affect students' educational experiences, their academic success, and the formation of their identities inside and outside of school. These studies show that youth identity--especially race, class, gender,…

This case study, which investigates twenty-four 11th-grade students of American literature, asks: What successes and challenges did students experience when reading "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" through a critical race theory (CRT)/critical Whiteness studies (CWS) lens? Findings reveal that applying a CRT/CWS lens helped students…

This article explores the practice-linked identity resources offered to preservice ELA teachers as they moved through a teacher preparation program. Nasir and Cooks's (2009) concepts of ideational, material, and relational resources are used as a frame to analyze the way preservice teachers talked about teaching writing at three points during…

This article examines the need to implement practical methods for helping teacher candidates in English language arts develop effective dispositions. The author suggests that candidates compose proleptic autobiographies--a form of discourse that describes an envisioned future as if it has occurred in the past--as a way to articulate the…

Recent decades show increased scholarship in literacy education considering LGBTQ-themed texts and LGBTQ people in English language arts classrooms. Building on studies exploring choice in school-based reading, I focus on the experiences of youth navigating their visibility when they interacted with other people about their queer reading choices…

This study examines five novice teachers' perceptions of their preparation, interests, and abilities to integrate citizenship education into their secondary English language arts classrooms. The English teachers in this study highlight the difficulty in promoting progressive, social justice curricula without first grounding that pursuit in…

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 exploratory study investigates English education professors' beliefs about the economic value of studying English language arts (ELA). In response to a 44-item, cross-sectional survey, 140 professors clarified their beliefs about which economic benefits are and should be offered in high school ELA classes; how ELA classes are and should be…

In this article, I argue that English educators must interrogate acts of physical and linguistic violence against Black and Latinx youth and take them into consideration when shaping curricula. English teachers can provide a space for youth to make sense of their racialized experiences. I highlight the marginal treatment of Black and Latinx…

This article explores the potential of using multimodal texts--particularly comics--as a way of engaging teacher education students in critical inquiry around literacy and ELA assessments. We describe a qualitative study into the use of a multimodal comics-form article within an ELA/literacy assessment course in an MEd program. Our findings…

An increased emphasis on writing standards has recently led many U.S. states to incorporate text-based writing assessments into their test-based accountability system. This creates political and pedagogical tensions that teachers must navigate in their classroom use of writing rubrics. While prior research has focused on rubric design and/or the…

A national study of English teacher preparation in U.S. colleges and universities revealed that faculty address changes in content and context salient to English education, particularly curricular, demographic, political, and technological changes, through initiatives at both the program and methods course levels. Programs require many hours of…

This article addresses the importance of foregrounding social justice in teaching and assessing dispositions for preservice teachers in secondary English language arts. We provide a historical overview of dispositions and their politicization, and we address NCATE's removal of social justice and its impending return. We conclude with possibilities…

Teacher educators, literacy scholars, and classroom teachers are beginning to develop curricula that leverage digital literacy practices and make visible what elementary students are learning across modalities. Although this body of work provides valuable examples (e.g., digital storytelling, innovative uses of digital apps and platforms, creating…

We offer this article to support ELA and other subject-area teachers as they think about why disciplinary literacy teaching is important and how to enact it in robust ways. We argue that it is critical for the improvement of students' academic literacy development and overall learning that all teachers and literacy researchers attend to the…