bell hooks's (1994) advocacy for teaching to transgress invites educators and students alike to transgress boundaries to strive for ways to know and live fully and deeply as whole human beings. The authors aim to showcase a transgressive attempt in bringing French and English into one multiage (Grades 4-6) classroom, with its two teachers--English…

In Canada, as elsewhere, there is considerable concern about adolescents' health. Much of the blame is thought to lie in the social context for today's adolescents and their interaction with and dependence on various media. Yet, it is not clear whether and how adolescents learn to engage critically with media messages about health. Emerging from…

'PhotoVoice' is a participatory documentary photography tool that empowers youth with little money, power, or status by providing them with opportunities to voice their critique and act for enhancing their realities. Grounded in critical literacy theory, this research tool has the potential to raise students' awareness to problematic issues in…

This dissertation is a qualitative practitioner research study in which I explore how my students and I engage in critical literacy using sociopolitical Articles of the Week (AoWs). Critical literacy is the ability to read, write, and speak about texts in a reflective manner to better understand power, inequality, and injustice that prevails in…

Incarcerated adolescent girls can benefit from an English classroom where personal identities, roles, and relationships can be challenged, resisted, and confronted. Education in English can be a transformative experience allowing adolescent girls to reshape and rethink not only their literacy identities but also their lives. An analysis of the…

Traditional approaches to civic engagement have been marginalized and have had little impact on the core curriculum. "Critical civic literacy" is an alternative curricular approach to civic engagement that explicitly moves departments, disciplines, and degree programs to examine issues of social responsibility and social justice from the…

This ethnographic study documents how a space for critical literacy practices emerged as one teacher attempted to make literacy learning authentic. The school lunch program in an urban elementary district provided the theme for an authentic and focused literacy unit. Throughout this focus unit, the students not only met state standards but also…

Today's complex literate environments require contemporary authors to focus on the ethical responsibilities of media creation. This study highlights 12th graders in California who produced a documentary on Latino immigration and chronicles the complex interactions between student-generated media, critical literacy, and ethics. Findings highlight…

In this article, I explore emotions in relation to social justice dialogue and share vignettes to illustrate how emotions are embodied, situated and fissured, drawing upon narrative, critical sociocultural and rhizomatic theories. Data comes from a practitioner inquiry while teaching 5- and 6-year-olds in a summer enrichment program in a…

This study explores the relevance of multimodality to critical media literacy. It is based on the understanding that communication is intrinsically multimodal and multimodal communication is inherently social and ideological. By analysing two English-language learners' multimodal ensembles, the study reports on how multimodality contributes to a…

This article discusses the state of the art in the field of "adult ESL" in the US. It identifies the size, characteristics, and settings of adult education and discusses relevant professional standards, assessment procedures, and teacher preparation. Three approaches to noncredit adult ESL education will be presented (Functional…

Even as research continues to suggest the potential of assistive technology for improving student outcomes, it remains under-utilized in schools. Among numerous challenges to the effective utilization of assistive technology, research has suggested that educators are inadequately prepared to consider and implement the use of such technologies. In…

Despite improvements in educational provision in South Africa since 1994, the opportunities for learners from historically under-resourced schools to gain access to powerful English resources remain limited and unequal (Prinsloo 2012). In this article I will provide a detailed description of literacy practices in a township high school in Cape…

Recognizing the limitations of traditional research assignments, the two authors of this article--one a librarian and one a historian--set out to redesign a history capstone seminar to focus on the research process as much as on the research product: tipping the iceberg to look at what is underneath. The article begins with a brief overview of the…

Philosophical teaching gives permission to learners to explore the meaning of texts by drawing on their own experiences. By thinking out loud, they construct new meanings of texts. As a result of this oral work, what texts mean shifts in the unique relationship between text and reader and include child's voice. If educators nurture…