Critical literacy practices have moved their interest from Freirean binary analyses (e.g. oppressor versus oppressed) to more complex perspectives, where in a text the author/speaker is (dis) aligned with different discourse communities. Despite the fact that these teaching practices that are based in multiple discources are gaining attention,…

Women of Color feminists have theorized and pointed to the ways that chisme is a resistant practice for Women and Girls of Color. In line with this theoretical and epistemological framing of chisme, the authors explore the ways that gossip is, in fact, an intellectual and political literacy practice that Women and Girls of Color utilize in the…

This study explores the impact of implementing a peer mediation program in a middle school setting through an action research framework, presented as a series of case studies. The group of students receiving the intervention are on one "team" in the middle school, sharing the same group of teachers. The team is on a lower academic track,…

This case explores how a monolingual teacher, embedded in a large urban school context, saw and understood her role in supporting emergent bilingual learners' development of mathematics discourse. Particular attention is paid to the classroom arrangements and curricular and instructional choices this teacher made to facilitate this development.…

Every teacher knows the challenge of trying to engage reluctant readers and struggling writers--students whose typical response to a writing prompt is a few sentence fragments scribbled on a sheet of paper followed by an elaborate shrug of the shoulders. The best way to engage less confident readers and writers is to give them something powerful…

This exploratory study examined the complexity and interrelatedness of dialogic discourse, disciplinary literacy, and the social environment necessary for student learning. Taking place in an urban school in a large Midwestern city, analysis of three 8th grade language arts lessons indicated that dialogic discussion was sustained and supported by…

This paper presents an exploratory analysis of treatment-control differences in the quality of classroom interactions in 4th through 7th grade urban classrooms. Word Generation (WG) is a research-based academic language program for middle school students designed to teach novel vocabulary and literacy through language arts, math, science, and…

This paper explores a middle school teacher's and his students' perceptions of the differences between online synchronous literature discussions and face-to-face literature discussions. Each member of this literature group participated in two face-to-face and two online literature discussions. Participants were interviewed twice to discuss their…

This article offers information about a district's school improvement efforts to reculture as a professional learning community, which we believe exemplifies the school and district levels of Fullan's (2004b, 2005) tri-level model. We use Fullan's eight elements of sustainability to organize the data gathered in interviews with school and district…