Recognizing the need to center equity-oriented practices within professional learning--and the challenges of doing so in traditional approaches to professional development--this study traced the experiences of teacher participants in a reimagined design of a teacher learning space. Drawing from narrative inquiry and case study methodologies, this…

Current English Language Arts programming and pedagogy, having evolved from colonial and racist histories, continue to employ instructional practices set to exclude, deculturalize, and assimilate America's marginalized citizens. Today's literacy educators continue to play a crucial role, regardless of intention, by further marginalizing their…

This research sought to examine the various types of social justice knowledge that 10 practicing teachers possessed and how this knowledge can be categorized and further nuanced. Drawing from the theoretical framework of social justice pedagogical and content knowledge, researchers inductively and deductively coded a corpus of interviews to…

This case study examines six English Language Arts (ELA) preservice teachers (PSTs) and the ways they recognize injustice and inequity in education, plan for addressing such issues, and engage as teacher-activists toward impacting the issues they recognize. This research was guided by the following two questions: In what ways do ELA PSTs use their…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the reading of a book-length fiction or non-fiction text in one disciplinary literacy (DL) teacher education course. This paper considers how the assignment may help pre- and in-service teachers understand literacy as multifaceted and connected within and beyond their content areas (Moje, 2015). The research…

For the past decade, the number of homeless youth in the United States has drastically increased, with public schools now consistently serving over one million homeless students each year. Research spanning three decades has linked youth homelessness and poorer academic achievement. In addition to decreased academic achievement, homeless and…

Many teachers enter teacher education programs expecting to develop tools and ways of thinking necessary to cultivate educational equity in their classrooms. Trends for teacher learning and development show that, while equity gets addressed, there is less evidence of frameworks, tools, and practices that center equity for teacher learning and…

Almost 20 years ago, Pope and Golub (2000) published their seminal work on teaching with technology in English language arts (ELA) classrooms in "Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education Journal" ("CITE Journal"). The purpose of this systematic literature review was to learn how subsequent research about ELA…

The purpose of this Brief is to gain a better understanding of the barriers experienced by students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) and the need to ensure authentically represented within the curriculum, and to create a safe and inclusive learning environment. Data shows that students who identify…

This timely book focuses on different social justice pedagogies and how they can work within standards and district mandates in a variety of English language arts classrooms. With detailed analysis and authentic classroom vignettes, the author explores how teachers cultivate relationships for equity, utilize transformative language practices,…

Educators concerned with social justice are working in very different social and legal contexts than when they first began to take up the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) lives in the school and the curriculum. The growing number of countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, the recent US Supreme Court…

As teachers, it is important that we grapple with the reality that schools, teachers, and the larger social institutions that impact us are never neutral. Scholars explain that the starting place for teachers who want to enact practices for social justice and to disrupt harmful "single stories" is to read LGBTQ titles and consider how…

This article draws from an ongoing longitudinal qualitative inquiry into the preparation and development of social justice-oriented urban English teachers. It examines the cases of three graduates of an urban education-focused teacher preparation program who claim different intersectional identities and have completed their fourth year as urban…

This "Conversation Currents" features JoBeth Allen and Valerie Kinloch discussing their thoughts and experiences working with families and communities. Allen bases her comments on the belief that programs have to be adaptable to many different constituencies and demographics, and so must be recreated every year with every teacher and…

In this article, the author presents the results of a multistate study examining how teachers, and specifically secondary English Language Arts (ELA) teachers, conceptualize and implement teaching for social justice in standards-based contexts. Additional analysis underscores how this practice both reflects and extends earlier equity-oriented…