A historically responsive literacy (HRL) approach (Muhammad, 2020a, 2020b) fosters literary pursuits in learners, preparing them to transcend skill development and use literacy to shape a more just and compassionate world. Despite its transformative potential, not enough is known about HRL application with multilinguals, especially in secondary…

This theoretical article reflects on a recent development in adult literacy studies: transnational adoptees relearning their heritage languages. Literacy and adoption scholars have studied the replacement of the heritage language with a second language and reported it as a permanent loss. Returning to the country of origin, return adoptees…

This study aims to understand how bilingual college students constructed literacy spaces across their lives rather than an in-school/out-of-school dichotomy. Drawing on Lefebvre's (1991) spatial triad as a lens to examine the participants' spatial literacy practices, the findings show that some participants repurposed planned spaces into literacy…

This article presents findings from a six-month Language and Social Justice course collaboratively designed with multilingual educators in the Dominican Republic. Teaching and learning processes with Dominican and Haitian youth (ages 18-24) illustrate how opportunities to learn about English and Kreyòl from a transnational perspective can disrupt…

The German government requires all migrants without sufficient German language proficiency to enroll in integration courses. Many of these migrants had few prior experiences with formal education, yet, regardless of degree of literacy in any language, they are placed in classes based on language proficiency. How well do government-approved…

Adolescents who are newcomers in a country and beginning to acquire English as an additional language are often in secondary classrooms with teachers who do not speak their languages. Due to these communication obstacles, there is a great need for teachers to build relationships with their students while setting optimal conditions for literacy…

This case study describes the dynamics of a literacy curriculum that was collaboratively designed at a community language school. The curriculum teaches participants how to get a driver's license in Massachusetts, focusing on the English language literacies necessary for passing the written and road tests. This case study describes the…

Disciplinary literacy (DL) is an important facet of adolescent literacy development. However, for adolescents who struggle with literacy, opportunities to engage with DL and advanced concepts are often withheld in favor of focus on basic skills. Deaf or hard-of-hearing (dhh) children, for example, are at a higher risk for experiencing language…

As new technology has changed adolescents' literate life pathways outside of school in remarkable ways, new uses of terminology, such as "mutiliteracies", are necessary to capture the multidimensional nature of literacy. However, there have been few studies on the multiliteracies experiences of Korean adolescent English learners (ELs).…

This article documents the current research efforts of a research team at a Colombian university to explore the new forms of literacies in second languages in the city. The different research projects from this research team aim to break the social imaginaries, often perpetuated in policies, that people in cities are not using English as a…

Nationwide, virtually all secondary students interact with British literature, a traditionally Anglo, white, male canon. Yet, this revered curriculum provides few mirrors for students from historically marginalized populations to see their own cultures reflected. In this reflective practitioner piece, the authors first illustrate how…

The author explores how one teacher at a newcomer school (a school for recently arrived immigrants) used dialogue journaling and write-alouds as instructional and community-building tools in her work with multilingual ninth-grade students with limited or interrupted formal education in their home countries. The analysis shows how the focal teacher…

Educators are expected to take into account students' linguistic experiences when designing literacy instruction. However, official school records traditionally provide limited information about students' linguistic histories. This article presents educators with a linguistic survey that can help bridge this gap. The survey is an easy-to-use…

Although immigrant youth make up more than 20 percent of school-age children in the U.S., little is known about how they manage school assignments and texts. In this paper the author presents Tara (pseudonym) as a telling case of a first-generation immigrant youth who is encountering and grappling with academic literacy--defined as not only the…

Through a multimodal media production literacy intervention in an extended-day program, culturally and linguistically diverse youth developed valuable information and communication technology literacies, including: (1) Specific how-to skills useful in future academic, professional, social, and civic contexts; (2) Abilities to critically interpret…