"The Ballad of Proxima-B" is an educational RPG that promotes learning and collaboration. Students contribute to world-building and game mechanics, creating fictional worlds and characters, including a dystopian Earth, the planet Proxima-B, and alien races. The game incorporates constructivist, constructionist, and Dynamic Systems Model…

The Science of Teaching Reading (STR) has received increasing attention as states continue to pass educational policy initiatives grounded in STR research. One major change resulting from STR policies is the heavy focus on the systematic instruction of phonics. Texas in particular has seen sweeping changes to their preservice teacher (PST)…

This case study utilized poetic inquiry, a qualitative research methodology, to explore the reading experiences of 13 postgraduate high school students from various North Texas high schools. After selecting and reading young adult novels featuring protagonists who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex,…

The extant literature concerning the existence and experience of the LGBTQIA+ community in the United States sometimes overshadows that of people with intersex variations (Jones, 2018). While many people with intersex variations identify within the binary, these variations directly challenge belief systems conforming to the existence of only two…

The purpose of this study was to gauge the effects of offering LGBTQIA+ novels to students in an English Language Arts and Reading high school setting. Most novel options for students come from old books available in the school's book closet consisting of antiquated stories offering little in the way of diversity. Students are more likely to be…

This article examines the pedagogical potential of art-based, early critical literacy as a space in which young bilingual children can explore the issues of human diversity and uniqueness. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, this study focused on 12 five-year-old children of Mexican origin at a charter school located in Texas.

Teachers are essential in ensuring children and society are aware of neurodiversity by actively incorporating inclusive children's literature into their classroom activities to promote understanding and acceptance of neurodiverse individuals. Integrating such literature may enhance children's awareness and acceptance of neurodiverse individuals.…

Created by Tufts University through a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project, the Novel Engineering website explains that "Novel Engineering is an integrated approach to teaching engineering and literacy" (2018) that asks teachers to support students' engagement in a project-based endeavor of problem-and-solution processes and…

Our Texas schools are becoming more diverse in terms of language, race, and culture, but our curriculum often does not reflect this same diversity. Despite the availability of texts featuring Latinx youth identities, English curriculum still centers on canonical texts that often bolster the privilege of dominant groups over the marginalization of…

Due to lack of consistency among diagnosis practices of students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in the state of Texas, as well as other legal matters regarding diagnoses of SLD, there is a divide among eligibility criteria for students around the state. Currently, the three models that have received the most attention of SLD…

With immigrant youth an important presence in Texas schools, reading new books for children and adolescents about their experiences can help to grow understanding and empathy for refugees and other immigrants. This article highlights five new books by Latina, Latino, and Latin American authors with characters who migrate to the United States from…

Education librarians are receiving an increasing number of requests to help researchers with systematic reviews. Systematic reviews are evidence syntheses that require comprehensive, reproducible search strategies. Many of the available training programs and materials focus on systematic reviews in the health sciences, not education or the social…

Although children's literature has been challenged and banned for decades, some U.S. states have recently enacted legislation limiting how teachers can address such topics as race, sex, and gender in classrooms, which may influence teachers' selection of literature. To understand this phenomenon, this exploratory concurrent mixed-methods study…

In most cases, the curriculum chosen for wide-use does not mirror or address the pressing needs of bi/multilingual learners, especially for those who are in middle and high school settings. In light of this and the increasingly negative national discourse surrounding minoritized students, our focus in this article is to offer in-service teachers a…

Outsourcing or privatising services in higher education is a common practice, but what do we really know about it? Is outsourcing effective? It is imperative that these questions be addressed since outsourcing is becoming a norm in higher education institutions. Scholars, institutional administrators and policymakers need to understand the…