Bilingual prospective teachers of color may possess experiences and knowledge particularly suitable for teaching linguistically diverse students but may need guidance and support to leverage such resources for teaching. In a class of 76 undergraduates, with a focus on bilingual students of color intending to teach, this study used self-reflexive…

English is best advanced by being relocated within the central aims of education, which in turn need to be drawn from Enlightenment values. Central among the latter is knowledge. The article argues that the least obviously "factual" side of English--novels and poetry--contributes to knowledge in direct and indirect ways. These include…

If Sally knows Sid to be a hard worker, she might make the point by asserting, "Sid is a hard worker." Or she might say, "Sid is a Sherman tank." We all recognize the first as an instance of literal language and the second as an instance of figurative language, specifically, a metaphor. This distinction is common even to people remote from us in…

The author knows firsthand that most kids seem to like poetry, however, something amiss happens along the road to adulthood, and many of those same students end up actively disliking poetry or not relating to it. Who can blame them? Poetry is often presented as a rarefied thing that exists only to be analyzed by professorial types or as…

In this article, the author, a poet and teaching artist, shares how he successfully brought slam poetry to College Hill Middle School in Texarkana, Arkansas. In 2001 he discovered slam poetry--a poetry-reading format in which poets compete in dramatic readings of their works--and went to Slam Nationals in Seattle on the Arkansas slam team. He…

Identical rhymes (right/write, attire/retire) are considered satisfactory and even artistic in French poetry but are considered unsatisfactory in English. This has been a consistent generalization over the course of centuries, a surprising fact given that other aspects of poetic form in French were happily applied in English. This paper puts…

As an educator, the author learned that her job was not simply to teach the fundamental concepts of literature and writing, but also to teach students the fundamentals of conversation and collaboration. In this article, the author shares her experience in using traditional, teacher-centered methods to inspire spirited conversations among students…

Field-note poetry is the product of the authors' efforts to combine current research in learning and cognition with integrated geoscience and language arts activities. In this article, they present a fun and effective activity that teaches students how to record detailed field notes and sensory observations that become the framework and…

Workshop pedagogy is a staple of writing classrooms at all levels. However, little research has explored the pedagogical moves that can address longstanding critiques of writing workshop, nor the sorts of rhetorical challenges that teachers and students in secondary classrooms can tackle through workshops. This article documents and analyzes the…

This case-study explores the effects of a school-wide writing competition and the implementation of a poetry-writing unit across all junior English classes in a rural New Zealand school. Teacher interview data were thematically analysed using a social constructionist lens. Results highlight the varied strategies adopted by teachers, while…

College students ("n" = 846) enrolled in a general education course were randomly assigned to either an arousal (experimental) or no-arousal (control) group. The experimental group was exposed to a topic-relevant, 90-second external stimulus (a technique used to elevate arousal and focus attention). The control group listened to the…

Although there is a vast research base on the literacy practices of adolescents and the issues surrounding the integration of technology despite current widespread access to tools and the Internet (Cuban, 2003), very little has been completed on the attempts of teacher educators to integrate technology within a specific content area to prepare…

This research study developed curricular specific open educational resources (OERs) for the teaching of poetry at Junior Certificate level in Irish post-primary schools. It aimed to capture the collaborative design and development process used in the development of the digital resources and describe and evaluate the implementation of the resources…

The integrative thinking essential to interdisciplinary inquiry requires not only critical reflection concerning the points of convergence and dissonance between disciplinary insights, but also something more personal and less predictable that this paper describes as "holding in relationship difference ways of knowing." Using the process…

This article explores the changing place of poetry studies in the broader English curriculum of Victoria, Australia. Its focus is on how students learning to become English teachers engage with poetry studies. Setting this problem within the context of pedagogical theory and evidence about the evolving Victorian curriculum, we have interviewed six…