Focusing on a large study of the implementation of secondary English Language Arts curriculum in California and Washington, we assess how teachers use learning goals to support students developing expert learning practices. Highlighting the value of goal setting to support students' agency in learning to write, we describe teachers' reasons for…

Literacy scholars have called for writing instruction to promote civic engagement, student agency, and multimodal composing. This study addressed this call by describing a research-practice partnership to reimagine writing instruction in a high school English course by incorporating human-centered design challenges. Using case study methods, we…

In participatory cultures, the lines between producers and consumers of text are blurred, and communities emerge that are based on shared interest and peer support. Although literacy scholarship has mostly focused on youth engagement and literacy practices within online participatory cultures, scholars in the learning sciences investigate these…

The authors describe and analyze the strengths and challenges of a 10-year summer writing program that provides out-of-school academic support for adolescent writers who are not yet college and career ready. The two-week program takes place at the university where faculty and school district English language arts teachers work with approximately…

Much of the special education research on writing has focused on skill acquisition and remediation. However, a significant problem with this approach is that it does not account for the sociocultural nature of writing or the importance of culturally sustaining pedagogies in writing instruction. In this article, the author uses practitioner…

Career and Technical Education (CTE) centers offer an opportunity for students to engage in authentic reading and writing activities. In many states, "embedding" English and math credits (i.e., allowing students to earn traditional core subject credits in the context of their CTE programs) has become a popular trend. This article reports…

This paper explores the potential of sketchbooks as a pathway for developing ideas for writing in high school English classrooms. This paper examines how shifting between drawing and writing impacts students' ability to develop ideas for writing and create meaningful texts. Specifically, this paper explores four types of visual sign making that…

Identifying English Education courses focused on young adult literature as apposite sites for exploring teacher conceptions of youth and the texts aimed for youths' consumptions, this article addresses the multiple sources of tension--and pedagogical potential--of teaching a young adult literature course centrally framed around controversial…

In the English language arts classroom, social justice is a way to increase students' abilities to articulate their experiences, critique their world, and address those identified issues with subsequent action. Teachers who practice social justice education cultivate student voice through class activities, readings, assignments, and assessments…

This article describes an assignment piloted in spring of 2008 called the Rhetorical Analysis Project, which required students to analyze three different texts addressing a common issue, compose an argument about the representation of that issue as illustrated by those texts, and revise that argument to match a rhetorical model they chose from…

From freshman composition courses to high school exit exams, the term "critical thinking" is everywhere. The educationally ubiquitous term has been defined as criticism that combines research, knowledge of historical context, and balanced judgment. In theory then, critical thinking should be taught in virtually every course in the humanities. In…

Describes how undergraduate secondary English education majors in a course on teaching writing defined and created the multigenre research paper, researching a topic and then writing a number of pieces that integrated and interpreted their findings. Notes students' enthusiasm, creativity and ownership; shows two student papers; and describes using…