Critical approaches to literature in secondary English require greater attention to narrative discourse. In this conceptual article, I provide interpretative tools from contemporary narratology and demonstrate their critical potential for high school English. In particular, I outline critical literacy's vital but overattentive focus on the…

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…

The aims of this qualitative study were (1) to understand the experiences of two middle school English Language Arts and Reading (ELAR) teachers as they planned and implemented critical literacy into a unit in their existing curriculum and (2) to understand the experiences of students as they engaged in a curriculum embedded with critical…

This book can help you incorporate critical literacy pedagogy into your high school English Language Arts (ELA) classroom, so that your students can use what they study in class to work toward making a more just and equitable world. Through the acronym CHANGE, the book explores how critical literacy pedagogy can support students as they Challenge…

Contemporary nonfiction for young people plays a crucial role in the reading and writing lives of K-12 students. It is a rich and compelling genre that supports students' development as critically, visually, and informationally literate 21st century thinkers and creators. Unlike many textbooks and materials written for online or print-based school…

This study investigates how young elementary children engage with conceptions of gender in connection to video gameplay in the language arts classroom. During a three-week unit on video game literacies in a multiage lab school, children learned about, played, discussed, and wrote about video games. Student writing, game reviews, and literature…

This article discusses four exemplary activities to highlight imaginative approaches that encourage critical literacy: building a jackdaw, responding to text through multimodal journaling, engaging in dramatic roleplay, and practicing multi-genre writing. Each activity connects imaginative approaches to critical literacy as learners view the world…

Understanding global perspectives and international cultures is important because of increasing global mobility, digital connections, and national chauvinism. As students engage with diverse others in schools and online, they need global, critical, and ethical understandings of language, literacy, and culture. From a critical cosmopolitan lens,…

The required literature (frequently referred to as "the canon") taught in the secondary English Language Arts curriculum often focuses on the "classics," which do not always connect to modern students or reflect their identities. This study sought to investigate how the ELA canon could be adapted to better reflect students'…

Culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012) has emerged as an essential way to value the evolution of culture among diverse learners. Discussions around teaching in a culturally sustaining manner in the English language arts classroom, specifically when teaching literary analysis, often address the need to incorporate multicultural literature so…

This article explores the benefits and problems of teaching with challenged books in the English language arts classroom. Challenged books initiate important discussions and provide opportunities for students to explore diverse perspectives. Methods for helping teachers and schools prepare for potential challenges are also discussed. The authors…

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 Inquiry and Research strand of the 2017 ELAR TEKS for sixth through twelfth grade includes vertically aligned standards for teaching students critical media skills by questioning the reliability and credibility of sources, evaluating bias, and recognizing logical fallacies. This article describes how increased media saturation has led to…

Purpose: Researchers and teachers have noted the power of students reading text sets or multiple texts on the same topic, and numerous articles have been published with examples of and frameworks for text set construction. This study aims to traces the theoretical assumptions of these frameworks and explores their distinct implications and…

While teachers and schools across the country actively work to impart curricula that is relevant and meaningful to their students, the written standards and reading lists too often represent a Eurocentric perspective and reinforce inequities perpetuated by the status quo. Too frequently, teachers are inadequately supported with or provided…