This article explores the ways in which the language of the hero's journey can serve as a heuristic for teachers at all stages of their professional experience. Teachers in Canada and the United States were interviewed via Skype about their experiences around writing and literacy. Four teachers are profiled here, two from Canada and two from the…

This study examined how the professional development initiative of Reading Apprenticeship (RA), which included the support of a school-based literacy coach, impacted two high school Title I teachers and their students. In the field of education, much is known about the qualities of professional development which lead to improved learning on the…

Through this piece, we draw upon critical race theory and Collins's Afrocentric feminist epistemology to highlight the importance of storytelling as a knowledge validation system in Black women's language. We illuminate and analyze a dialogic performance of two Black female literacy scholars in a coffee house "sipping tea," sharing…

As tertiary music educators across the Tasman we argue that music, particularly song, is an effective medium for teaching and learning about non-western music when preparing generalist primary Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs). Using "voice" as a portable and accessible vehicle to transmit cultural understandings, we draw on the Zimbabwean…

This paper reports on a study that used activity theory (AT) as a framework to understand the dialogical relationship between three elementary Core French (CF) teachers' personal and professional experiences and their literacy teaching beliefs and practices. This study used a case study design collecting data from three different teachers in three…

This qualitative examination of preservice teachers' experiences as they volunteered for a literacy program for immigrant students was compiled over the 2010-2011 academic year. The data sources for this project consisted of 90 written journal reflections analyzed by both researchers to develop thematic categories of the participants' comments and…

Whereas there has been much research on language and identity with respect to learners, teachers, and teacher educators, there has been little focus on the identity of the researcher, an important stakeholder in language education. Our research therefore addresses the following question: To what extent can narrative inquiry illuminate the ways in…

This article explores two beginning Canadian teachers' experiences of professional development in literacy education. Differences and parallel tensions between the Canadian teachers' and my own experiences as a teacher and teacher educator in Pakistan were identified through narrative inquiry. The significance of this article is found in the…

Significant changes have marked Brazilian education in the period focused on by this research. Aiming to understand the configurations of the teaching profession in that period, this work focuses on the issue of the school success in the area of literacy by means of an analysis of the practices of literacy teachers who were at work between the…

A bilingual education teacher from Alaska discusses the problem of Native language loss, his efforts to achieve literacy in his native Cheyenne language, and the important role bilingual education teachers have in language preservation. Strategies for language preservation include creating literature in Native languages and encouraging Native…