This issue of the Bank Street "Occasional Paper Series" is authored by an allgirl/womxn cast who brilliantly offers insights into possible futures, considering opportunities to rethink education and abolish the patterns of harm too-often enacted in and by schooling as it currently exists. This special issue begins with four articles…

This ongoing ethnographic study examines how a counter-space, La Libertad, introduces Latin@ students to a liberating pedagogy of praxis which counters dehumanization they experience in their high school. The researcher spent 180+ hours over 14 months in the field collecting data through participant observation, field notes, and personal…

This research study examines the impact of teacher research on participants in a large-scale educational reform initiative in the United States, No Child Left Behind, and its strand for reading teachers, Reading First. Reading First supported professional development for teachers in order to increase student scores on standardized tests. The…

This study examines the enactment of literacy coaching--one kind of formal teacher leader role--in two districts using data collected from daily activity logs and weekly interviews with 6 coaches over 7 weeks. To provide an in-depth examination, we highlight the case of Diane, a full-time literacy coach working at two elementary schools in one…

This article argues that when secondary school teachers are able to listen to the stories young people tell about themselves and their lives there is potential to improve their literacy outcomes. As a way of illustrating how and what can be achieved, this article tells the stories of two young men who scored below benchmark on the Year 9 LaN…

This article discusses how teachers in child care and elementary schools learn to work with Reggio-inspired pedagogical documentation. While teachers grasp the value of such documentation theoretically, it is most challenging but exciting to use in practical settings. Documentation illuminates teacher theories about children's understanding:…

This article presents a counternarrative informed by personal, critical, and qualitative perspectives, written in response to articles on effective classroom literacy instruction for improved academic performance published in March 2009 in "Educational Researcher." Classroom literacy instruction is a complex undertaking that must include…

Reforming schooling to enable engagement and success for those typically marginalised and failed by schools is a necessary task for educational researchers and activists concerned with injustice. However, it is a difficult pursuit, with a long history of failed attempts. This paper outlines the rationale of an Australian partnership research…

Since becoming president of the Alliance for Excellent Education in February 2005, the author has learned a great deal about the vital role that high-quality literacy research plays in improving teaching. Education researchers know how critical it is that they serve the needs of educators. As a former governor of West Virginia and member of the…

"The teacher who works for or allows status quo is the traitor. Purposeful change is the new norm in teaching" [Fullan, M., 1993. Change Forces: Probing the Depths of Educational Reform. Falmer, London.]. The University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan (USJP) is the main provider of tertiary education in English in the province of Sindh.…