Educators are faced with standardized testing weighing heavily as the basis of the curriculum. Several education policies have been put in place to support accountability in education but have created a decline in social studies instruction (Gaudelli & Laverty, 2018). This transcendental phenomenological qualitative study sought to bring…

This teacher-action research project explores using critical contemplative pedagogy in an upper elementary classroom setting to determine how youth media practices can be informed with combined critical media literacy instruction and contemplative exercises. Analysis of students' media production and deconstructions reveal promising outcomes for…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused many educational stakeholders to rethink the purpose and function of public education. The COVID-19 mediasphere and politically divided climate has ushered legislative stakeholders and the public's attention to the need for media literacy education. Critical media literacy addresses the goals of media literacy…

This dissertation considers critical, digital information literacy from a variety of perspectives including composition and rhetoric, applied linguistics, and human-computer interaction. My work seeks to ask what is being done within academia regarding critical, digital literacy when applied to student writing, sociolinguistics, and design. The…

Middle school students' ability to think critically and comprehend complex text is often challenging. Students often need additional academic support in this area. Close reading text is an instructional strategy that involves analyzing and looking at a text critically. The purpose of the qualitative phenomenological study is to examine English…

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore ways in which educators can provide space for critical literacy and transactional responses with literature in early childhood classrooms. This approach to early literacy involves bringing the following three theories into practice when teaching young children: Transactional Theory of Reader Response,…

This research investigated how a Critical Sociocultural Linguistics Literacy (CriSoLL) approach to authentic materials supports student literacy in a mixed Spanish heritage language (SHL) and additional language (L2) Spanish intermediate course at the university level. Using a qualitative approach (Cho, 2018; Esposito & Evans-Winters, 2021)…

This study investigates the critical literacy practices of adult learners at a community college. Student participants were selected from four different leveled reading courses. In this study, four guiding questions that were adopted from Klenner and Sandretto (2011): (1) How do students make personal connections to text?; (2) In what ways do…

The purpose of this action research study was to understand and develop school-wide critical literacy practices with middle school teachers. During Cycle 1, students, teachers, and administrators from one school within an urbanized district spoke with the researcher in either interviews or focus groups. Results indicated that in order to implement…

Social science and humanities researchers have long considered Appalachia a dynamic site for research. Within literacy education, scholars have called for continued critical literacy research within Appalachia, and to study the ways students' learning contexts can be designed to simultaneously support their comprehension, engagements with…

The present study investigated how an instructional coach supported elementary classroom teachers in critically analyzing interactive read-aloud texts and facilitating critical conversations with students about inclusive picture books. Extant literature highlights the importance of the representation of all identities in children's literature.…

This qualitative study explored high school students' engagement with a unit where video games and video game materials were incorporated into an English Language Arts classroom. Over several weeks, students engaged with video game content and composed their own video games using the free online platform, Scratch. The purpose of the study was to…

This case study focuses on the implementation and analysis of critical algorithmic literacy (CAL) lessons in two grade 3/4 combination classes. The study involves one elementary school teacher and 36 students from a K-6 school in Southern California. By analyzing various data sources, I identified trends that could be helpful for future…

This dissertation study called Young Adults Acting On the World (YAAOW), addresses the injustices of withheld opportunities for critical literacy engagement and the marginalization of refugee-background students through a qualitative experiment of a critical, collaborative project, patterned after social design-based experimentation (Gutierrez,…

This qualitative study explored the perspectives of literacy teachers in grades 3-6 regarding how the Science of Reading (SoR) has influenced teacher beliefs and instructional practices in relation to fostering students' critical literacy skills. The research was framed around the following three questions: What are literacy teachers' current…