Jory Brass and Leslie David Burns provide a useful and informative review of research appearing in the "English Journal" ("EJ") and "Research in the Teaching of English" ("RTE") over the past 100 years. It is a bit unfortunate, if understandable, to exclude books and articles in other journals, because such a restriction excludes many pieces of…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) create new common ground for high school-college collaborations through emphasis on expository writing in English language arts (ELA) and writing in content areas across the curriculum. This article, written collaboratively by a composition-rhetoric scholar and a secondary education leadership scholar who…

In this article, the authors share five practical teaching activities for introducing disability into the secondary English curriculum that also address NCTE/IRA objectives for the English language arts. They have used these lessons to help students better analyze the language/rhetoric of disability, understand how disability is represented in…

From flower arranging to negotiating with a willful cow, an educator stumbles across the threshold into a performative space of learning that invites her to pay attention to what matters when a teacher encounters her students. Performative inquiry in the classroom brings to the curriculum a spirit and practice of inquiry, critical and creative…

In his 1996 essay on curricula in an age of globalisation, Kress points to the role of the state and its educational system as determining actors when it comes to responding to the effects and pressures of the heteroglossia, hybridity, multilingualism and plurality of semiotic forms that characterise a global era. What is needed, he argues, are…

This report is the ACT annual report on the progress of U.S. high school graduates relative to college readiness. This year's report shows that 64% of students in the 2016 US graduating class took the ACT test, up from 59% in 2015 and 49% in 2011. The increased number of test takers over the past several years enhances the breadth and depth of the…

This article explores language and literacy teachers' classroom experiences in a digital age. Drawing on multi-literacies and new literacy studies frameworks, we use metaphors of classroom as text and teacher as author to build an understanding of the challenges and changes examined in the findings of two separate studies. The teachers were…

A problem exists in grading practices accurately measuring student achievement. Both students' academic achievements and nonacademic factors, such as effort, homework completion, and behaviors continue to factor into grades. This combination can lead to inaccurate representation of true academic ability, rendering a grade useless. While…

ACT has been measuring college readiness trends for several years. "The Condition of College & Career Readiness" is ACT's annual report on the progress of the graduating class relative to college readiness. This year, 54.3% of the graduating class took the ACT® college readiness assessment. This report is designed to help inform the…

This document presents the proceedings of the 19th Annual Research Forum held June 26, 2014, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 17 action research papers: (1) Using Voices to Change Minds: Oral Performance and Poetry in the English Classroom (Erika Bunpermkoon), (2) Imagining Audiences: The Use…

Conceptions of literacy in the secondary English language arts classroom today have expanded in multiple directions, moving far beyond former emphases on reading comprehension and writing ability. This article presents the efforts of two secondary English language arts teachers in the Midwestern United States to expand the meaning of literacy in…

This dissertation chronicles my search to engage high school English students in inquiry as part of a formal research process. The perspective of critical literacy theory is used to describe the four phases of the problem posing process in shaping student research and action. Grounded in Freire's approach and consistent with Dewey and others who…

One way to merge imagination with problem-posing and problem-solving in the English classroom is by asking students to respond to "cultural and political vignettes" (CPVs). CPVs are cultural and political situations that are presented to students so that they can practice the creative and essential decision-making skills that they will need to use…

The "Condition of College & Career Readiness 2014" is ACT's annual report on the progress of the graduating class relative to college readiness. This report provides a national snapshot of academic performance among African American students in the high school graduating class who took the ACT® college readiness assessment and…

This keynote address will discuss the findings and implications stemming from a study of what literacy means for a group of 12 teachers and teacher educators. It will also discuss the factors that have caused the ongoing evolution of these ideas about literacy. Relying on the idea of a "permeable literacy continuum," which uses five…