As a term, "connective literacies" refers to the reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and critical thinking skills necessary for students to engage and interact meaningfully, productively, and safely in a variety of digitally connected spaces. Using a critical literacies approach to honor the voices of adolescents as producers…

This study aims to improve digital literacy skills of students belonging to disadvantaged groups with regards to SES and ICT access. It is assumed that without increasing the number of available devices, appropriate pedagogical integration can enable these disadvantaged students to be equipped with digital literacy skills. Based on this frame of…

In this article, we describe how eighth-grade students and teacher candidates used sound and listening to remix and attune themselves (Stewart, 2011) to the dystopian novel "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury (2011). We situate our sound inquiries in relation to critical literacy (Vasquez, Janks, & Comber, 2019; Wargo, 2019) and sound…

This interpretive study examined how eighth-grade students responded to a multimodal short story introduced to them by their English Language Arts teacher as part of a multimodal literacies curriculum unit. By analyzing fieldnotes constructed from observations, the classroom teacher's voice-recorded reflections, and the students' work, the author…

We know from previous research that teacher questions can influence reading comprehension development; however, we know less about the reading processes that are required of students through the use of questions. The present study examines teacher questions on texts reviewed during whole class reading comprehension instruction across 51 lessons in…

To engage in critical praxis, teachers of literary response writing need concepts and methods for understanding the efficacy of teaching practices in helping students develop particular dispositions towards texts and the social issues they represent. In this article, the author uses concepts from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and Systemic…

This article shares the case of a student-driven?investigation?into?social issues from an eighth-grade civics class at an American school in Mexico. Through vignettes about the teaching and learning process, the author argues that a focus on students' inquiry into their social contexts rather than on specific social justice content is a key…

The study explores how literacy sponsorship (Brandt, 2001) is constructed in a United States rural region by focusing on the discourse of rural teachers and students. Data included interviews with teachers and students, classroom observations, an environmental print literacy scan, and analysis of community and classroom-based texts. A multi-cycle…

This qualitative study focused on the voices and the identities of nine students as they experienced their 8th grade English inclusion classroom in an urban middle school while their teacher and I endeavored to negotiate critical literacy theory into practice. The interaction among the participants--the students, the teacher, and the…

This article draws upon our experiences of participating in a Literacy Hub in South Africa. The aim is to describe and analyse how dialogue among Grade Eight teachers in a Literacy Hub around literacy teaching practices might lead to professional development and deepen teachers' understanding of literacy practices and teaching. Interviews and…

The increased presence of technology in school communities and children's lives poses a challenge to traditional teaching and learning tools. The present case study examines ways in which a classroom teacher, Marnie, conceptualised the use of a multiliteracies pedagogy (MLS) and a multimodal approach to elicit the lived experiences of her English…

This paper attempts to answer this question: what should ecoliteracy mean in a biocapitalist society? The author situates his analysis of this question within the general context of the neoliberal reconstruction of education in the US. Specifically, focus is given to the shared model of governmentality GE food industries and education policies…

This article reports on an action research project with 9 eighth-grade special education students in a self-contained classroom in an urban public school. The 1st author, in collaboration with the classroom teacher (3rd author), taught the students a critical media literacy framework to explore popular culture websites. Students learned to analyze…

Action research, particularly done by teachers, has had a contentious, decades-long history. As a form of social inquiry, action research has been designed to make it easier for members of social groups to create social change within their communities. Rather than conducting research that focuses on an outcome, action researchers focus on the…

An instructional focus on critical literacy (CL) encourages students to become active readers and writers of cultural texts so that they can create their own meanings in order to shape and transform their social conditions (Lankshear & McLaren, 1993; Shor, 1992). It is, however, seldom pursued with English learners (ELs) because teachers…