This paper responds to Michael Rosen's blog entries, "How Genre Theory Saved the World", arguing that genre theory in the tradition of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has made an important contribution to language and literacy pedagogy. It emerged in the Australian context in about 1980 and was initially developed in response to…

Writing is a foundational skill that can support and extend student learning across the curriculum. Writing is used to communicate stories, opinions, and information, and to express one's understanding of concepts and ideas during an individual's K-12 educational career and well beyond. Despite written expression's importance and…

This paper explores the possibilities for pedagogy inherent in the reading practices which emerged from an extra-curricular graphic novel reading group set up in a Scottish secondary school. The research is presented within the framework of the new literacy studies and its focus on "practices" and "events" but, more…

It was early March 2008, and the author was only a few months from finishing her third year as an elementary school librarian. During the morning recess the school library was humming with the sounds of students. Suddenly, three students rushed in asking the author to help them find a silent-reading book for class. Looking at the clock and seeing…

Traditionally, school librarians have had two main strategies for impacting the literacy development of students in their schools. One way is through reading promotion efforts: book talks, book displays, or online book trailers, and literacy events such as book fairs, contests, and reading incentive programs. The other way has been through…

As much as three quarters of the modern Vietnamese lexicon is of Chinese origin. The majority of these words are often assumed to have originated in much the same manner as late Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese borrowed forms: by rote memorization of reading glosses that were acquired through limited exposure to spoken Sinitic. However, under closer…

The field of second language (L2) writing has moved beyond the false dichotomies between process- and genre-based pedagogies perpetuated in the 1980s and 1990s, but there has still been little research on how the two are actually reconciled in the classroom. Consequently, L2 writing instructors are left with an incomplete picture, unsure how to…

This multisite study investigates dialogic literacy events that revolved around narrative and informational texts in two 3rd-grade classrooms. The authors offer a metaphor of musical improvisation to contemplate dialogic literacy events as part of the repertoire of teaching and learning experiences. In literacy learning, where there is much…

Traditional Rhetorical Genre Study (RGS) methods are not well adapted to study exclusion because excluded information and people are typically absent from the genre, and some excluded information is simply unrelated to the genre because of genre conventions or social context. Within genre-based silences, how can scholars differentiate between an…

The figure of the vampire has been an important element of popular culture for more than a century. The movies have been a home for vampire stories, and they have presented them as unusually frightening images. A recent explosion of vampire screen works reveals a new emphasis on addressing female issues as opposed to male issues and focusing on…

Increasingly learning advisors provide generic support for doctoral students. The terms "genre" (a category, type or family) and "generic" (ambiguously both "of a category" and "non-specific") are interrogated here in relation to such support. Literary studies scholars divide texts by genre for the purpose…

Understandings about genre govern nearly all of the choices writers make. They make choices about form, persuasive moves, conventions, and even ideas through a sense, whether articulated or tacit, of the social situation from which a piece of writing is arising. In a semester-long high school writing course, the authors engaged students in a…

In this article the author--a full-time high school mathematics teacher and concurrent doctoral candidate in Department of Middle-Secondary Education and Instructional Technology at Georgia State University--will make a case for the use of an autoethnographic methodological tool he is calling "narrative mining." He will begin by briefly…

Colour, a visual element of art and design, is a semiotic mode that is used strategically by sign-makers to communicate meaning. Understanding the meaning-making potential of colour can enhance students' understanding, appreciation, interpretation and composition of multimodal texts. This article features a case study of Anya, an 11-year-old…

This article argues for the adoption of a new language in critical educational studies through the "narrative turn", a turn that politicizes knowledge by drawing attention to questions concerning the meaning, construction and authorship of narratives. In the authors' interpretation going back to the poetics of early narrative forms they…