Personally and professionally, the author shares experiences with school safety and how the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom may utilize middle grade novels to address gun violence with adolescents. Highlighting five middle grade novels that address school shootings--Katherine Erskine's (2011) "Mockingbird," Emily Barth Isler's…

Using Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed (1985) playmaking structures, students in an undergraduate education course, Educating for Social Justice, developed forum plays--brief improvisational scenes designed to provoke discussions of power imbalances. The plays focused on "gay rights," a topic the participants self-selected through…

This study examined the impact of remix journaling as a new media literacy practice on undergraduate students' engagement and ownership of learning. Using arts-based pedagogy combined with new media literacies, this study chronicles students' perspectives on knowledge-building, expression, and social agency through remix journaling. Findings…

In this paper, we highlight how restorying with preservice secondary English language arts teachers can encourage them to explore what is possible with mandated texts, like those found in the canon, for diverse world building centered in empathy, self-exploration, and justice. Findings highlight the critical reflective process preservice teachers…

As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continue to advance, their integration into secondary and postsecondary education offers a multitude of opportunities for adolescent and adult learners. In this article, we delve into the advantages of integrating AI into literacy education, emphasizing its capacity to enhance writing skills, provide…

Using pre- and post- intervention data, this formative study explores instructional moves designed to guide students' critical thinking as they engage in lateral reading and digital source evaluation. Working in a dual enrollment composition classroom, researchers identified and addressed three areas of need: considering context when determining…

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…

The 2016 presidential election marked the beginning of a so-called "post-truth era" in which mis- and disinformation have contributed to political polarization and violence, the acceleration of global warming, and thousands of preventable deaths. In this paper, I draw on the results of a 2-week, practitioner inquiry-informed case study…

Given constant online access to information, critical news literacy, or the ability to access and critically evaluate the news, is essential for adolescents to learn about the world and obtain civic knowledge to participate as national and global citizens. Although there has been much research focusing on how youths critically read and produce…

As our students' consumption of internet memes through social media increases, a critical perspective toward these memes becomes increasingly important. Memes present teachers with a powerful and relevant way to approach critical analysis and discussion in the 21st-century classroom. In this article, the authors present a framework for…

The ubiquity of written argument in academic contexts has underscored the importance of effective argument evaluation and writing pedagogies. Teachers can improve students' argumentation proficiency by intentionally addressing myside bias, the propensity to support arguments with which one preemptively agrees while selectively ignoring…

In teaching canonical literature, presuming a text's merit and infallibility can inhibit the development of critical thought and may transmit values that are not socially and politically just. The author describes how educators can promote academic literacy and critical consciousness in their students through pedagogy that helps students…

Research has strongly supported the role of classroom talk as a valuable teaching and learning tool. Carefully crafted teacher-student discussions that encourage broad student participation and knowledge building correlate with increased knowledge generation and higher academic achievement. To better understand classroom talk as an instructional…

Research about adolescents sharing creative writing in interest-driven online communities has suggested that teachers can play important roles in helping young writers realize the potential of online spaces. Framed by sociocultural notions of new literacies and a conceptual framework theorizing the rhetorical situation when sharing writing in…

The Internet is the dominant text of this generation, and through intentional use it may provide opportunities for the critical literacy infused pedagogy. As we consider the online and offline literacy practices that our students will need as future events warrant, the one constant is change. This requires a continual re-defining, and…