Research-based and practical reflection tools can enable systematic analysis of practice and contribute to deeper understandings of classroom processes. An empirically based, evidence-informed reflection tool was developed to support teachers to recognise feedback talk and how it is built into classroom interactions. The tool, titled the feedback…

This dissertation project used an interpretivist qualitative research design to study how the right-to-read claim made by seven teenagers attending Detroit public schools in 2016 reflects, addresses, or describes contemporary discussions about educational access. Using situational analysis (SA) as a theory/method, the entirety of the claim…

In this study, we investigated media reports and literacy research in four nations--China, Morocco, the Republic of (South) Korea, and the United States--about the relationship between adolescents' literacy and use of digital media, or digital literacy. We present short "snapshots" of adolescents' digital literacy in each country and…

Increasingly, professional learning (PL) approaches in the U.S. and globally are reflecting highly adaptive and socially constructed views of learning. However, much remains to be learned about how professional learning groups discursively develop and sustain collaborative communities. Drawing on positioning theory in this year-long qualitative…

Variation in language has been acknowledged as central to the characterization of spoken and written discourse. Speakers' ability to change and adjust language according to the communicative circumstances is a prominent factor that demonstrates their linguistic literacy and skill. Nonetheless, few studies have explored the characterization of…

Oral language is the primary means through which a child controls, describes, organises, and evaluates their life experiences and their ability to use oral language which effectively impacts their future literacy development. Currently, the world is awash with dynamic change and constant disruption. These include natural disasters such as the…

This three-paper dissertation uses social network analysis to examine the literacy development and small group discourse of multilingual students in Grades 4 and 5. The data come from a randomized-controlled trial testing the effectiveness of homogeneous and heterogeneous small groups for English learners. The first paper tests whether two types…

Ideological struggles over the policy and practice of literacy education continue to characterise the field. This paper explores how 'new policy actors', market-orientated and profit-driven players, construct the crisis of literacy and schooling in Australia to reclaim the doxa of literacy education. The concept of doxa is employed to show how…

This study explored eight middle school teachers' language about literacy implementation in their disciplinary classrooms. Interview data and supplemental artifact data were gathered from two previous studies focused on disciplinary literacy in middle school settings. This critical discourse analysis examined how teachers' language elucidated…

In the present study, I draw on Canagarajah's (2019) negotiated-literacy orientation and the systemic functional linguistic (SFL) approach to discourse analysis (Eggins & Slade, 1997) to demonstrate the varying degrees to which Fatima and Chow, two multilingual doctoral students, were able to question and negotiate normative literacy practices…

Background: Within the multilingual context of KwaZulu Natal (KZN), learners in Grades 1-3 are taught in their native language which is isiZulu. From Grade 4, English or Afrikaans becomes the medium of instruction. Yet, many parents prefer that their children be taught in English. It is the assumption that young learners' self-concept and identity…

Recent years have witnessed the ethnographic turn in academic writing research and the multimodal turn in classroom discourse studies. Most research proposal genre studies have only provided generic guidelines, and most EAP intervention studies have only provided pre- and post-intervention learning outcomes but have not examined actual in-depth…

The digital is inextricably woven across people's everyday lives and literacy practices, and English educators are tasked with preparing students to be critical, ethical, and agentic inventors and consumers of digital text. What has crystallized for English educators is an awareness that facilitating "digital discourse"--or the multiple…

The aim of this paper is to advance an understanding of power in linguistic landscape research. After setting out and discussing the concepts of 'power over', 'power to' and 'power through', we present a case study of Chinese semiotic assemblages in the Australian regional city of Bendigo. Our research includes ethnographic details of the…

Despite pedagogical efforts to promote preservice teachers' racial literacy, preservice teachers may resist critical racial pedagogies. Such resistance has serious, detrimental consequences in classrooms populated with students of Color. To study how interracial groups of preservice teachers (PSTs) engage with issues of race outside of their…