Given the growing interest and representation of superheroes in comics and other media, we are interested in the ways young people read superhero texts and how those readings influence their conceptualisations of gender within and outside educational spaces. In this article we explore students' responses to (re)presentations of gender in superhero…

This article documents work with pre/in service teachers who are university students across three universities in three regions of the US, across multiple courses. Given our shared concern about the narrowing of space for imaginative literacy practices in schools, we focus on our collective use of open-ended, arts-based pedagogies as a way to…

Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, and Nathan Hale's graphic novel set "Rapunzel's Revenge" (2008) and "Calamity Jack" (2010) features fractured fairy tales that take up the issue of 'the damsel in distress,' questioning and complicating traditional gender roles in fairy tales. Throughout both graphic novels Rapunzel's character…

Teachers and students require a range of tools to engage with visual texts. Using "The Great American Dust Bowl" by Don Brown (2013) as an exemplar text, we outline four conceptions of visual literacy: rhetorical, instructional, industrial and visuo-spatial and discuss their use in our literacy education practice. In addition, we provide…

Literacy across the content areas has often signified a focus on helping future teachers navigate nonfiction texts and promote command of textual features and literary terms, yet these teachers also need to model critical insight that invites students to question information and purported facts that define their realities. Following a brief review…

Graphic nonfiction is optimal for helping readers challenge the common tropes associated with nonfiction, yet the application of fictional aspects to nonfiction subject matter is uncommon, even in the graphic novel form (Porat, 2015). However, the three books this article focuses on, "One Dead Spy, El Deafo," and "Drowned…

The authors document research completed in 10th-grade language arts classes where a canonical play was read alongside a graphic novel in the hopes of shifting student understandings of power and privilege in literature. Using teacher action research as a methodological framework for this qualitative study, a teacher and researcher engaged in…

Despite ongoing and prolific critical scholarship arguing for the widening of the secondary language arts curriculum, many practicing teachers are required or encouraged to teach a curriculum dominated by canonical texts. This is often the case at schools with highly diverse students whose varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds have…

This article explores the possibilities of graphic novels with young readers. During the 2009-2010 school year, while working with four fifth-grade students, the author examined the question "In what ways do readers engage while reading a graphic novel?" The fifth graders took part in book discussions and one-on-one interviews after reading two…