Poetry is notoriously unpopular in high school English classrooms all over the world, and English FAL (First Additional Language) classrooms in South Africa are no exception. We report on a pedagogical intervention with Grade 11 learners in a township school in Johannesburg, where the classroom was opened to indigenous poetry and identities by…

This article looks in detail at the constraints imposed on teachers of English by current examination syllabuses, and at how approaches developed through the Key Stage 3 (KS3) offer and the innovative Excellent Futures Curriculum at Stanley Park High School, Carshalton enable KS4 students to be more securely and fruitfully engaged as readers,…

This article serves as an invitation to see the way the teaching of biography-driven writing has been increasingly pushed out of the secondary English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum in favor of highly structured, formulaic, and impersonal writing, and how this is a setback for students in their preparation for college and career writing. The…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which school choice was related to the academic achievement of Texas high school students. Schools of choice were compared to neighborhood high schools in terms of their students' passing rates in the standardized End-of-Course (EOC) exams in English I and…

Purpose: This qualitative research study examines classroom observations and transcripts, teacher and student interviews and student writing to investigate how white English teachers can cultivate students' critical literacies regarding race and oppression through classroom literature. As research and practice in the field of critical literacy has…

Teaching British literature with a traditional curriculum does not offer students exposure to many females at all, either inside or outside of the text. There are female characters within many of the classic texts in the curriculum, but on further examination, we questioned the general picture of womanhood painted by them. So the authors showed…

This article presents a new measure of curricular intensity that is objective, parsimonious, clearly defined, replicable, and comparable over time for use by researchers interested in examining trends, causes, and outcomes of high school course taking. After proposing a reduced-form version of Adelman's curricular intensity index comprised of…

The author details how new literacies create spaces for student voices to be heard and how, by valuing video as a medium for expression, students are able to critically engage with their world and the world outside of the classroom.

The feeling of voicelessness creates a sense of internalized powerlessness for students in their schooling and preparation for learning and success. The San Joaquin Valley is surrounded by farms as well as correctional institutions and service industries. Each of these industries is interconnected with students' lives, with some having family…

The author argues for and provides examples of nonfiction as a way of bringing truth and beauty into English classrooms.

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…

The purpose of this quantitative record of study was to explore the relationship between performance on EBRW scores on the SAT and participation in dual credit, advanced placement, or on-level junior English coursework. In addition, the relationship between participation in a collegiate academy magnet program and SAT performance was also of…

Through engagement with critical literacies and multiliteracies, an urban classroom becomes a space of agency and resistance for students and teacher alike.

Learn how to incorporate rigorous activities in your English language arts or social studies classroom and help students reach higher levels of learning. Expert educators and consultants Barbara R. Blackburn and Melissa Miles offer a practical framework for understanding rigor and provide specialized examples for middle and high school ELA and…

This study examines how instructional conversations revealed the ways two teachers' argumentative epistemologies (ideational and social process) shaped literacy events focused on the warranting of evidence. A microethnographic study of the literacy events within each teacher's respective instructional unit revealed that each teacher's epistemology…