First year students often experience a culture shock as certain literacy practices at the university level are different from their experiences in high schools. Some major challenges that students encounter include students' ability to maintain academic integrity practices in their studies, to comprehend complex academic texts to outline key…

Teachers' instructional practice is pedagogically vulnerable when not anchored within detailed and comprehensive observation and understanding of students' immediate responses during instruction. Professional noticing ability, then, is central to, and integrated within, teachers' ability to provide instruction appropriately adapted to students'…

Disciplinary literacy is gaining momentum as an approach to adolescent literacy. Believing that a key aspect of disciplinary literacy is knowledge construction, the authors introduce a model for relating disciplinary literacy with project-based inquiry. Rather than merely exploring topics during inquiry, students use practices of a discipline to…

This article examines how three culturally relevant teachers in New York City public schools challenged the concepts of race and racism which low-income adolescents of color brought to the study of history and contemporary society. Framed by concepts of culturally relevant teaching and racial literacy, the study illustrated how the teachers used…

Place-based literacy learning is hardly an innovation in education and need not revolve around Native American legends. The objective of place-based literacy learning is to use local literacy artifacts to facilitate critical thinking about cultural, political-economic, and environmental connections to promote community sustainability by relating…

Critical reflection is defined as an educational imagination that allows candidates to look at themselves and their situations with new eyes, and in the process, become conscious of the multiple ways they can interpret, critique, challenge, confront, and reconstruct teaching. This study examines the effectiveness of using explicit instruction in…

In this article, the author explores the implementation of the K-3 Reading First initiative and its recommendation for scientifically based reading curricula. During a time of high-stakes testing and accountability, this policy has emphasized a skills-based approach to reading and placed importance on scripted teaching models. Using data from a…

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) contracted with Synergy Enterprises, Inc. and edCount, LLC, to complete a study titled Language Instruction Educational Programs (LIEPs): Lessons From the Research and Profiles of Promising Programs. This study includes a review of the foundational literature related to LIEPs, case studies…

This paper discusses current thinking and practice about the use of popular culture in the primary school to teach literacy. It attempts to question the methods that attempt to galvanise children's interest in popular texts to teach the current literacy curriculum. It argues that there is an incompatibility between the pleasures and practices of…

This article examines a key factor of the National Literacy Strategy, interactive teaching, and looks in particular at how it may be affecting teacher autonomy. It traces the development of this approach in the Literacy Hour and describes a research project which showed that many teachers have their own sophisticated ideas about interactive…

This article examines the community of practice model as a framework for integrating educational research and practice. In addition to defining communities of practice and reflective practice, it describes two researcher-teacher partnerships and offers suggestions for transforming traditional methods of conducting research on educational practice.…

The purpose of this guide is to provide a middle school literacy model, to describe practices and strategies of literacy education, and to assist school communities as they implement a balanced Turning Points literacy program that is responsive to the particular needs of middle school students. This guide includes: (1) the rationale for a Turning…

Cultures determine identity in that they prescribe the "food, festivals, and fashion" of their members; for example, rap music, baggy pants and gestured dancing identify the hip hop culture (recognizable to both "members" and "non-members"). Cultural identities are created and maintained by "literacy"--the…