Content Area Literacy Research Papers (original) (raw)

2025, Reading Research Quarterly

Reading researchers have been engaged with K‐12 disciplinary literacy instruction that spotlights the reading and writing of knowledge‐producing communities. While research includes rich descriptions of professional scholars enacting meaningful disciplinary practice, questions remain about youth practices in some knowledge‐creating communities, particularly those related to the school subject of English language arts. Drawing on theories of aesthetics and social life, this study investigates the disciplinary practices of 18 youth in a digital learning community focused on aesthetic interpretation. Youth participated in semi‐structured interviews and verbal protocols. Findings illustrate that youth drew on shared social practices across interpretive scales in ways that both mirrored and diverged from professional scholars. Shared practices of this community included noticing, speculating, aligning, and diffusing. Youth employed these practices across, aesthetic, communal, and societal scales. This article contributes to ongoing efforts in disciplinary literacy and explores implications for social justice teaching and learning, particularly in English language arts classrooms.

2025, The journal of media literacy education

Although scholars and practitioners have suggested teachers integrate media literacy into content instruction to equip students with the skills needed to participate online, media literacy may be a new or underutilized concept for teachers. As teachers must acquire the necessary skills to educate students about media literacy, online professional development is an efficient method for teacher learning focusing on concepts often overlooked by school divisions such as media literacy. This case study examined the change in six high school teachers' perceptions of their competence related to the instructional integration of media literacy while participating in an online professional development course. Findings indicated a perceived increase with the following: media literacy connections to content curriculum, media literacy language, use of the open web, and media evaluation. Recommendations include specific refinements to the online professional development course, implementing differentiated media literacy learning experiences, technology coaching, and leveraging media literacy for social justice.

2025

Each recommendation provides instructional advice on a specific topic; together, the three recommendations presented in this practice guide highlight two important themes for delivering effective writing instruction. Constructing, articulating, and analyzing their own thoughts in writing requires students to think critically about their ideas and how to convey them based on their Effective writing: • Achieves the writer's goals. These goals can be set by the writer or teacher, or through collaboration between the writer, teacher, and/or peers. • Is appropriate for the intended audience and context. For example, a persuasive text written for a school newspaper may look different than one written for an online forum. • Presents ideas in a way that clearly communicates the writer's intended meaning and content. The writer's ideas are well-organized and clear to the reader, and expressed effectively. • Elicits the intended response from the reader. For example, a persuasive text compels the reader to take action, whereas a mystery novel elicits feelings of suspense or surprise from the reader. ( 2 ) ( 3 )

2025

Integrated instruction may be everyone's ideal, but it is the reality in few classrooms. This review of existing literature examines research to determine why this ideal may be infrequently realized. The review concluded that the mismatch between ideal and practice may be at least partially explained by the ambiguity in definitions in the professional literature. Finding no theoretical framework on which to base the review, the first task of the reviewers was to develop one. Next, the reviewers applied this framework to existing research on integrated instruction in elementary grades. They found few data-driven studies on integrated instruction of any sort, although essays advocating integrated language arts were many. Most projects interpreted integration as loose, thematic links. When studies considered interdisciplinary instruction, the boundaries between the subject areas were often rigid. Rarely would a literary stance or writing as a means for reflection be fostered across subject areas. While integrated approaches can serve to restructure school curriculum within and beyond the language arts, the paper concludes that a stronger theoretical and a research base is needed in establishing when and how to integrate the curriculum as well as for what purposes and for whom. Contains 108 references and a figure presenting a conceptual map of integration. (RS)

2025, Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness

2025, A Practical Guide to Supplement the Teaching of Secondary Art Methods

2025, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

In this piece, the authors offer two illustrations of central features of disciplinary literacy teaching. One illustration describes an episode of history literacy teaching, and the other describes an episode of physics literacy teaching. Both examples show how teachers may support students’ development of disciplinary inquiry, disciplinary concepts, and extended use of texts in secondary classrooms. Illustrations were drawn from a long‐term study of the teaching practice of attending teachers and preservice teaching interns affiliated with Clinical Rounds, the secondary undergraduate teacher education program at the University of Michigan. Conclusions are relevant for teachers seeking to design and enact disciplinary literacy teaching in their classrooms and for all literacy practitioners seeking a common language for recognizing and naming aspects of disciplinary literacy teaching across disciplinary domains.

2025, Science and Children

2025

This systematic review explores the role of digital transformation in advancing sustainable English language learning, focusing on faculty perceptions in the Female English Department at King Faisal University (KFU), Saudi Arabia. The study examines four critical dimensions: enhancing progress measurement and assessment, fostering collaboration, linking theoretical knowledge with practical performance, and promoting educational equity. Through comparisons between the Saudi context and international practices, the review highlights how digital tools can create more resilient, adaptable, and inclusive learning environments. In the Saudi context, digital platforms such as Madrasati and Blackboard Collaborate have enabled significant advancements in real-time assessments, student collaboration, and equitable access to education, aligning with the broader goals of Saudi Vision 2030. Internationally, countries like the United States, South Korea, and Finland demonstrate how digital tools have been integrated into educational systems to enhance student engagement, provide continuous feedback, and foster inclusive learning practices. This review provides practical implications for educators and policymakers, emphasizing the need for continued investment in digital infrastructure, teacher training, and equitable access to technology. In both Saudi Arabia and international contexts, digital transformation offers powerful solutions for enhancing language learning sustainability. By aligning these efforts with the strategic goals of Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia can foster a knowledge-based economy and ensure its education system is equipped to meet the demands of a globalized, digital world. This review underscores the transformative potential of digital tools in creating sustainable, performance-driven, and equitable education systems worldwide.

2025, Social Studies Lesson in Türkiye As A Means of Citizenship Transfer: A Perspective from The Critical Citizenship Education Approach

In this study, it was aimed to examine and evaluate the Social Studies Curriculum, which was announced by the Board of
Education in 2018 and since then has been implemented. The curriculum was examined according to the critical citizenship approach, which is one of the citizenship approaches, taking into account the grade levels. This study was carried out
using a case study design which is appropriate to a qualitative research methodology. Document analysis was used in accordance with the research design and objectives. According to some important findings obtained in the study, it has been
observed that the program emphasizes the sense of identity as much as possible while neglecting content aimed at allowing
individuals to freely express themselves. The program is shaped around a centralized identity understanding focused on
culture, state, and society. The skills of active participation are addressed only in the context of maintaining the existing
order and solidarity. The importance of democratic social movements and organized struggle, how they are or can be utilized, the inequalities that exist or may exist in society, and how these issues can be resolved; as well as concrete examples
and practice-based information on how the dominant discourse is or can be effective in any area of political or social life,
are not included. In general, it has been revealed that social studies education in Turkey, which aims to cultivate effective
and responsible citizens, is not approached from a critical citizenship perspective and its content does not align with this
approach.

2025, The qualitative report

This grounded in social constructivism yearlong ethnographic case study was conducted at the final stage of a larger, longitudinal, multisite, and multi-year project. The current research focused on a group of urban public elementary schoolteachers who volunteered to participate in the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded interdisciplinary science and engineering partnership (ISEP) project. These teachers were enrolled in the professional development (PD) college courses in physics and engineering design, summer research in university laboratories, and interdisciplinary science inquiry (ISI) pedagogy sessions. This research sought to understand the factors which contributed to successful teamwork at the elementary school under investigation. Additionally, this study investigated the changes in the ISEPparticipating educators' teaching approaches, methods, and techniques upon their completion of their studies with the ISEP Summer Institute. Data were collected from the structured interviews with the participating teachers and their students and observations of the school-based activities during in-class and extra-curricular instruction. The researchers used Saldaña's (2013) thematic and value coding and memoing for data analysis. This research found that the teachers' team embedded their newly acquired research experiences and pedagogic knowledge into their instruction. Joint endeavors of the project participants lead to higher interest and engagement in learning processes in this school's student population as well as greater involvement of the schoolchildren, their families, and the surrounding community in the team-organized science-based educational events and activities.

2024

To_determins how_some learning_diSabled students manage to achieve success,in college; a study investigated the extent to which successful learningdisabled college_stUdehts demonstrate characteristics often attributed_to learning_digabled Students in general: inactive learners who fail to use efficient, Oita:ilia strategies and who lack self-knowledge about the nature of their disability, about its limitations, and about general Strategiet fer coping_with their disability; Subjects;_three junior and tine_Sehiar learning disabled college students; were interviewed and adMinittered the_"Advanced Reading:Inventory;" Results indicated that thead_ Students overcame:their learning disabilities_by applying SOund _ reading skills and a range of strategies to exploit their_Strengtha And cope_ with their learning disabilities; Specifically;_findinga _ thOWed that subjects; when reading the passages aloud and talking_and Writing about them, made use of (1) several metacomprehension wOrd attaCk Strategies_for text:processing; including text structure_ ClUeSk prior_knowledge, and_strategic learning; (2) two macroruldS for SUMMatizing teXt1 deletion_and generalization; and (3) self7aVareness_attribution patterns and the following coping Strategies: using_strengths, limiting ths use of the deficit areao_ and getting help_from a tutor or monitor; These findings suggest_that personal responsibility for:learning oUtdomes can be reinforced in learting_diSabled students by developing:healthy; internal attributions for academic sucdeat:And failure; and by encouraging_ learning disabled students_to ekploit their strengths and to develop appropriate coping strategies; (Eiccerpts from interviews and reading protocolSk at Well as five pages of references are included.) (JD)

2024, Journal of language and literacy education

1 Abstract: 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 of literature, we situate ourselves and our students. This article documents the pedagogical moves to introduce a graphic novel in a university Content Area Literacy course while also showcasing insightful responses from teacher candidates along the way. We argue that using a graphic novel and introducing it strategically to teacher candidates complicated their ideas about literacy engagement. Further, our work challenged teacher candidates to consider literacy practices, especially involving nonfiction texts, that are multidimensional and critical.

2024, The International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

This instructional article describes recent implementations of ethics education in a teacher education course at a large university in the Southwest United States. Using a case analysis framework in tandem with a principle-based ethics schema, a teacher educator and his research assistant designed five content interventions for their content area literacy curriculum in the hopes of helping preservice teachers position their developing pedagogies alongside a cultivation of ethical reasoning and decision making. Rooted in ethics education literature that reveals a lack of empirical data surrounding the impact of professional ethics in teacher education settings, the article explains innovative teaching methodologies while sharing samples of student work along with a review of students' reactions. Finally, questions are posed for further research in higher education regarding the implementation of ethics for future teachers.

2024, Journal of language and literacy education

This article describes a recent practitioner-research study of secondary preservice teachers' development of literacy instruction in a content area literacy course at a large university in the Southwest United States. The study utilized a sociocultural approach that focused on discipline-specific literacy practices that define what it means to be literate within a content area. After sharing perceptions of their ability to use literacy practices to design effective literacy instruction in an open-ended survey, participants created a series of lesson plans by focusing on literacy practices they identified as vital to their disciplines in a text analysis assignment. Finally, participants completed a second survey following the unit and took part in semi-structured interviews. Qualitative content analysis was conducted on survey responses, essays, lesson plans, and transcribed texts. Findings conclude that a focus on disciplinary literacy practices invites social and cultural connections between the ways in which people make meaning and the contexts surrounding those operations, and that those practices inspire new kinds of instructional strategies designed to enhance literacy achievement.

2024, Journal of Media Literacy Education

This practitioner article describes the recent implementation of critical media literacy (CML) activities in secondary teacher education at a large university in the Southwestern United States. Preservice teachers in a content area literacy course analyzed a variety of media coverage of events that occurred near their university. Using an analytical framework for approaching texts, images, and messages, preservice teachers practiced critical exploration of media sources and motivations while articulating hidden figures of power and authority behind the dissemination of content for public consumption. Highlighting the pursuit of independent media and the cultivation of intellectual self-defense, this "Voices from the Field" article shares curricular artifacts, along with student responses to media and reflections on their developing pedagogies, to show how future teachers developed CML skills in their preservice coursework.

2024, Action in Teacher Education

Future teachers often manifest a low confidence in their own writing and do not see themselves as writers. Developing an identity as authors requires ample opportunities for writing that sustain preservice teachers' discourses and cultural models. As writing across the content areas is considered a powerful way of learning, creating spaces for future teachers to strengthen their writing skills and their predisposition for teaching writing must become a priority in teacher preparation. This article proposes that autobiographical poetry in particular allows aspiring teachers the freedom to explore their cultural identity while drawing upon various social literacies and can serve as a bridge between personal and professional reflection. Specifically, this paper features autobiographical poetry-writing activities implemented in two teacher education courses at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the Southwest of the US-a Bilingual Education/ Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) course with 20 students, and a Content Area Literacy course with 34 students. These pedagogical practices are contextualized within a sociocultural approach that focuses on encouraging students to tap into their cultural and linguistic backgrounds as they prepare to develop their own pedagogies centered on agency and identity.

2024

Undergraduate university students in Korea who did not have a reading habit in English showed a clear enthusiasm for reading in English after participating in a single sustained silent reading session and a trip to an English library. However, such positive experiences can result in an English reading habit only if students have a time and place to read, and easy access to interesting reading material

2024, International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education

2024

2024, Paedagogia

Based on extant theoretical and research literature, the authors highlight four “key” literacies that they argue are important to strategically integrate in social studies unit planning to support students’ meaningful, inquiry-based learning. In this paper, the authors define the four key literacies - content area literacies, disciplinary literacies, civic literacies, and critical literacies – and
explain how they can be thoughtfully incorporated by teachers within unit planning to foster meaningful and transferrable knowledge, skills, and understandings for students. The authors anchor explanations of the four literacies in backwards design unit planning via a fifth-grade social studies unit plan designed by one of the authors.

2024

Construct maps are important tools in educational assessment and can serve multiple purposes related to development and validation, as well as score interpretation and use. This chapter outlines a process for developing a construct map from the qualitative ordering of teachers’ responses to open-ended assessment items. The construct of interest pertains to a teacher’s ability to attend to what students say and do, which is a key component of many recommendations for instructional practice within mathematics education. The instrument we are developing is designed to measure teachers’ attentiveness to student thinking in quantitative reasoning problem situations. A key aspect of our instrument development process is the development of a construct map that hierarchically orders qualitatively different levels of teacher attentiveness. In this chapter we describe our process for developing the construct map with the intent of providing an example to others who may be interested in engagi...

2024

In this second edition, the authors have addressed the discipline of mathematics in greater detail and shared lesson planning ideas for math. In addition, each chapter is updated with the latest research in the field of disciplinary literacy. The authors reemphasize that a key feature of disciplinary literacy is understanding how knowledge is created in the various disciplines and is more than just content. A new chapter focuses on disciplinary literacy in the professions and in civic life. Each chapter 4 through 12 has ideas for teachers and teacher candidates to “try it on” as they work to improve their instruction of literacy in the disciplines. Updated and new interviews with disciplinary experts, literacy professors, and teachers are in the new and improved chapter 2.

2024

The author has granted a nonexclusive license allowing Library and Archives Canada to reproduce, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, communicate to the public by telecommunication or on the Internet, loan, distribute and sell theses worldwide, for commercial or noncommercial purposes, in microform, paper, electronic and/or any other formats. L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public par telecommunication ou par Nnternet, preter, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou autres formats. 1+1 Canada AUTHOR'S DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that I am the sole author of this thesis and that no part of this thesis has been published or submitted for publication. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge, my thesis does not infringe upon anyone's copyright nor violate any proprietary rights and that any ideas, techniques, quotations, or any other material from the work of other people included in my thesis, published or otherwise, are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices. Furthermore, to the extent that I have included copyrighted material that surpasses the bounds of fair dealing within the meaning of the Canada Copyright Act, I certify that I have obtained a written permission from the copyright owner(s) to include such material(s) in my thesis and have included copies of such copyright clearances to my appendix. I declare that this is a true copy of my thesis, including any final revisions, as approved by my thesis committee and the Graduate Studies office, and that this thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other University or Institution.

2024

The methodology for this study combined a quasi-experimental design and a collective case study. Quantitative data were collected to determine if strategy-based instruction, delivered through a team teaching approach, would result in a significant increase in metacognitive awareness in participating grade 9 students as measured by the Junior Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Jr. MAI). Quantitative data were also examined to determine if the regulation component of metacognition was more positively correlated with exposure to strategy-based instruction than the knowledge component. In addition, this study attempted to understand the experiences of teachers as they learned together. The posttest results revealed that a) there was no significant difference between the groups of students at the conclusion of the study and b) neither component (knowledge of cognition nor regulation of cognition) was more correlated with exposure to the strategies than the other. Analysis of additionally...

2024

I present the following hypotheses: Providing students with comprehensible and interesting reading material in pinyin will result in improved acquisition of oral/aural Mandarin. This additional competence in Mandarin will make texts written in Hanzi more predictable and easier to understand, resulting in improved acquisition of Hanzi. If these predictions are confirmed, it means more rapid acquisition of Mandarin and more efficient acquisition of characters

2024, The Reading Teacher

English orthography is not easily reduced to a few rules, but there are some general recommendations for teaching about vowels that can be helpful. Article: Theodore Clymer's analysis of the utility of 45 phonic generalizations (1963) has been hailed as a landmark study and been reprinted as a "classic" (1996). It continues to be frequently cited almost 40 years after it was originally published. His conclusion that only 18 out of 45 phonic generalizations met criteria of usefulness is more often than not used as evidence that phonics instruction itself is of limited usefulness. Depending on one's philosophical orientation Clymer's findings may be disappointing or vindicating, but in view of the current interest in phonics instruction it is worthwhile to take a closer look at the study. Clymer collected 121 generalizations from the teacher manuals of four primary basal series used in the early 1960s. In a manner Clymer described as "somewhat arbitrary," he selected 45 generalizations that "were stated specifically enough so that it can be said to aid or hinder in the pronunciation of a particular word" (1963, p. 254). He combined the vocabulary introduced in the four basals with the Gates Reading Vocabulary for the Primary Grades to form a list of 2,600 words for analysis. Merriam-Webster 's New Collegiate Dictionary, 6th ed. was used as a guide to pronunciation. He compared the actual pronunciation of each word to the generalizations that should apply and calculated a percentage of agreement for each generalization by dividing the number of words actually conforming to the rule by the total number of words that could possibly conform. Using 75% as a reasonable level of utility, and eliminating any generalizations that did not apply to more than 20 words, he found that only 18 of the 45 generalizations met his criteria. He concluded, "many generalizations that are commonly taught are of limited value" (p. 255) but noted that "some of the generalizations might be useful if stated in different terms or restricted to certain types of words" (p. 258). Clymer's original analysis needs to be reexamined, not only in terms of his findings and conclusions, but also in terms of what we currently know about how children learn to recognize words. After looking back at some little-known replications of Clymer's study, I will present a current analysis of vowel regularity done with slightly different parameters. The findings of this analysis will be compared to Clymer and other studies in order to demonstrate some of the issues that affect interpretation of this kind of analysis. The utility of phonic generalizations continues to be an issue as teachers make decisions about what to teach. Teachers will find some specific suggestions about the teaching of vowels scattered throughout this article, as well as some general recommendations at the end. Replications of Clymer's work After the appearance of Clymer's study in the early 1960s there was a flurry of replications. They appear to fall into two general categories: those that merely changed the collection of words for analysis and those that attempted to restate the generalizations or to call into question the kind of generalizations students should be taught.

2024

To my loving husband, Joseph, your selflessness, love, and encouragement carried me through the toughest of times. Thank you for believing in me. You are my world, and I love you. To my children, Lucille, William, Vincent and Anthony, thank you for your love and support, for holding me accountable to finish what I started, and helping me maintain my sense of humor. Your love and loyalty to our family mean the world to me. To my "daughters" Michele, Sara, and Meghan, and "son" Peeter, thank you for listening offering a kind word or encouragement. To my beautiful grandchildren, Harry, Viktor, Hazel, Adrianne and Roman, thank you for bringing unconditional love, joy and laughter to my life. Use the gifts God has given you and never, ever give up. To Aunt Ann, thank you for cheering me on and stressing the importance of perseverance. To my sister Kathleen and niece Sophia, thank you for your love and support. To Vicki and Eileen, my "sisters," I love you both. To Angela, my assistant, thank you helping me reach the finish line. I dedicate this manuscript to the memory of my mother, Marie Antoinette, who, through a strong female example, modeled motherhood, integrity, and an unprecedented work ethic. To the memory of my father, William, who taught me that I could achieve anything I set my mind to and fostered a love of reading and writing in me from a very young age. Finally, to my brother, Michael "Rock" for showing me that we only get one life and to live it without regrets. Thank you, mom, dad and Mike, for supporting me in my dreams and by always making your presence known when I needed you most.

2024, Journal of Literacy Research

In this Insights column, four authors address the question: Given current and potential shifts in education policy, what should literacy educators keep in mind to move forward with exceptional literacy research and practices? Majors and Lewis urge white scholars to reach out to scholars of color in learning how to generate counter-arguments that speak back to alternative facts. Tierney encourages the field to learn from scholars who are engaged in community based participatory research and activism, especially those who are engaged as allies with groups of people who are indigenous, marginalized, transnational, and cross-cultural. Beach calls on the field to consider research that examines implementation of the Common Core State Standards, such as argumentative writing and translanguaging.

2024, Literacy Research and Instruction

that affect schools and how they function informed ILA's decision to create a set of distinct standards for the three roles of specialized literacy professionals. By separating the roles, we have "sharpened the terminology" as recommended by Galloway and Lesaux (2014, p. 524). Standard requirements for the reading/literacy specialist now focus on the primary role as instructional, while maintaining an emphasis on the need for professionals to be able to work collaboratively with other educators. Standards for literacy coaches place primary emphasis on working with teachers in schools; whereas, standards for literacy coordinators/supervisors emphasize districtwide leadership of literacy programs. Thus, preparation programs can now focus their development efforts more precisely on the role of the reading /literacy specialist or coach or coordinator/supervisor.

2024, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

This article investigates the impact of scaffolded feedback instruction provided through an undergraduate methods course. Because of a desire for preservice teachers to have online teaching experience and due to low performance scores in assessment on the edTPA, a project was created which partnered preservice teachers with middle-grades students. Preservice teachers provided digital feedback, as students worked on a research project, while receiving scaffolded instruction about feedback in their methods course. Our study utilizes a mixed-methods intrinsic case study design. Participants included 82 rural middle school students and 16 preservice teachers from a large public university in the Midwest. As a result of participating in the methods course, preservice teachers' abilities, confidence, and beliefs about giving feedback improved. Middle-grades students reported feeling positive about receiving feedback and felt it was helpful. Implications for instructors, preservice teacher training, middle-grades student learning, and issues related to studying teacher education are discussed.

2024, L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature

In this paper, we aim to explore and exemplify what opportunities to develop disciplinary reading literacy students are given access to in particular types of classroom reading environments in social science subjects. The investigation focuses on how the teacher organizes activities around reading, on what content is approached in text-related discussions and on whose perspectives are allowed space in the classroom discourse. The empirical data consists of classroom observations from two classes in year five and two classes in the Swedish upper secondary school, using different approaches to teaching reading, one being Reading to Learn. With a theoretical base in systemic functional linguistics (SFL), dialogism and reception theory, the classroom discourse was analysed in terms of sequential reading stages, text movability and dialogicality. The findings reveal how differently organized reading environments provide different support structures for students' disciplinary reading. For example, the findings indicate that text activities that support the reading process in several stages bring about a larger potential for the development of reading literacy. However, the picture changes depending on to what extent students are given room to express their reception of the text, and thereby contribute to an active understanding of text in a dialogical classroom.

2024, Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

This article reports on a middle school literacy intervention implemented during a yearlong teacher-researcher collaboration. The purpose of this collaboration was to combine and adjust commonly recommended pedagogical approaches to address the literacy needs of a heterogeneous group of seventh graders attending an urban school. University researchers designed and implemented the intervention with an interdisciplinary team of three teachers. The intervention drew on sociocultural theories of language and learning. It had three main features: integration of English and social studies, multi-level texts, and co-teaching of heterogeneous groups. Qualitative data included field notes from classroom observations and planning meetings, transcripts from teacher interviews, and classroom artifacts. Data were analyzed as they were collected and used in planning sessions. Additional analysis after the intervention ended focused on exploration of critical events reflecting convergence and dive...

2024, The Journal of Teaching and Learning

This study examined preservice teachers’ perceptions about teaching elementary level mathematics lessons integrated with music. It also sought to determine how preservice teachers would strategize the integration of music activities when introducing elementary level mathematics lessons. The participants, 53 undergraduate preservice teachers at a large public university in a southern metropolitan area, were provided a series of six 40-minute interactive music-math integrated activities. Results of qualitative data analyses revealed that the majority of preservice teachers provided positive feedback about music-integrated pedagogy for teaching mathematics because it allowed them opportunities to escape from the limitations of traditional mathematics instruction.

2024, The Qualitative Report

This grounded in social constructivism yearlong ethnographic case study was conducted at the final stage of a larger, longitudinal, multisite, and multi-year project. The current research focused on a group of urban public elementary schoolteachers who volunteered to participate in the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded interdisciplinary science and engineering partnership (ISEP) project. These teachers were enrolled in the professional development (PD) college courses in physics and engineering design, summer research in university laboratories, and interdisciplinary science inquiry (ISI) pedagogy sessions. This research sought to understand the factors which contributed to successful teamwork at the elementary school under investigation. Additionally, this study investigated the changes in the ISEPparticipating educators' teaching approaches, methods, and techniques upon their completion of their studies with the ISEP Summer Institute. Data were collected from the structured interviews with the participating teachers and their students and observations of the school-based activities during in-class and extra-curricular instruction. The researchers used Saldaña's (2013) thematic and value coding and Miles and Huberman (1984) memoing for data analysis. This research found that the teachers' team embedded their newly acquired research experiences and pedagogic knowledge into their instruction. Joint endeavors of the project participants lead to higher interest and engagement in learning processes in this school's student population as well as greater involvement of the schoolchildren, their families, and the surrounding community in the team-organized science-based educational events and activities.

2024

A group of instructional strategies for monolingual teachers to use with elementary and secondary school students with limited English skills are described. The strategies are drain from a teacher education curriculum focusing on this issue. All are based on the notion that monolingual and bilingual teachers can team teach to break down linguistic and cultural barriers in the classroom. All were also experienced by monolingual and bilingual teaching credential students in the course of a demonstration. They include the Total Physical Response technique, sheltered subject matter teaching, use of comprehensible input, efforts to lower the affective filter of students, use of realia, dramatization of a story, and monolingual-bilingual team teaching for primary language instruction. Some useful student reading t.aterials and teacher resources are noted. Contains 20 references. (MSE)

2024, The Journal of Educational Research

This paper explores the integration of interdisciplinary, standards-based making in elementary classrooms through an investigation of teachers' navigation of contradictions between traditional academic practices and the playful, imaginative, and collaborative design thinking that characterizes making. Empirical findings are reported from a three-year, NSF-funded research project that involved the integration of standards-based Mobile Maker Kits into 15 elementary schools within a suburban-rural Southern school district. Drawing on a framework that recognizes making and formal learning as interactive activity systems, this qualitative study illustrates how teachers experienced and resolved contradictions as they integrated the kits into their classrooms. We conclude by discussing how integrating standards-based making provides opportunities for transformative learning that allows students and teachers to engage in creative production, design thinking, and experimentation.

2024, Nordic journal of literacy research

Previous research has shown that cooperative learning interventions, in which reading comprehension strategies are embedded, have a positive effect on students' reading comprehension. However, the question is whether these interventions give rise to genuine discussions, promoting flexible and dynamic understanding of texts. In this study, one lesson module from the intervention Cooperative Learning and Reading Comprehension (CL-RC; Klang et al., 2022) was studied using theory of stances of envisionment building (Langer, 2011). The results of the video analysis disclosed that, over the course of three lessons, the peer-led discussions and teacher-led discussions provided unique opportunities for student literary understanding. The results also revealed the limitations of CL-RC intervention with regard to opportunities for students to focus on an author's craft and literary elements or to use their envisionment in new unrelated situations.

2024, The Reading Teacher

Increasing numbers of English‐language learners and the challenge of supporting their learning in social studies and science brought together a group of urban literacy coaches and university faculty. This article describes the development and refinement of a partner reading routine, Partner Reading and Content, Too (PRC2). Partners with similar reading levels read short, informational texts that are part of a text set on the particular unit being studied. Students learn to preview and identify key features of the text and then read the text together sharing in reading orally, questioning and discussing, and then attend to important content vocabulary. Informal assessments used as pre‐ and posttests help teachers and students monitor their fluency, conceptual understanding, and vocabulary. Results from classrooms provide evidence of the strength of PRC2 in supporting content literacy and of the impact on students' self‐confidence and satisfaction.لقد جمع ازدياد عدد دارسي اللغة ال...

2024

If teachers are to help students develop higher-order reading, thinking, and writing skills, then researchers must begin by articulating the ways of knowing that are central to particJlar domains. A study was elaborated to provide initial information about the ways in which people talk about "knowing" in academic subjects as they appear in the scholarly literature, in the pedagogical literature, and in teachers' understandings of what counts as knowing in their classrooms. The first part of the study is an extensive literature review. In the second part of the study, subjects, 48 biology, American history, and American literature high school and college teachers, completed background questionnaires and two hour-long interviews. The interviews focused on the teachers' general conceptions of teaching and learning and the goals of instruction in a unit of study from a current course in their discipline. Results indicated that the teachers favored a relatively traditional approach to instruction, with lectures and teacher-led discussion playing the dominant role, and with student centered activities appearing less frequently. These results parallel other research in suggesting that classroom emphasis tends to be on specific content at the expense of the rules of argument and evidence unique to each discipline. (Twenty-one tables of data are included, and 256 references and an appendix of interview schedules and questionnaires are attached.

2024, American Journal of Education

Recent studies of reading and writing instruction suggest that literacy instruction is easily distorted, incorporating measures of achievement that do not reflect students' mastery of the process of understanding, reading materials that are ill-structured and divorced from any real communicative intent, and exercises in subskill learning that remain divorced from the intended achievements. An alternative model of literacy learning, based on the notion of instructional scaffolding, offers five characterstics of interaction that are critical to the success of activities in classrooms. These characteristics suggest that (1) the instructional task permits students to make their own contribution to the activity as it evolves, thus allowing them to have a sense of ownership of their work; (2) the instructional task grows out of knowledge and skills the students already have, but poses problems that cannot be solved without further help; (3) direct instruction in the form of questioning, modeling, or constructive dialogue helps the student develop a successful approach to the task; (4) the teacher's role in the instructional event is collaborative rather than evaluative; and (5) over time, instruction changes in response to the student's internalization of the patterns and approaches practiced with the teacher's assistance. (HOD)

2024

A study examined the language and interactions that occurred in classes where teachers felt they were providing an environment that fostered reasoning about their coursework. The discourse within the diverse classrooms of eight high school teachers (two each in American literature, American history, biology, and physics) was examined. In each discipline, the teachers' instructional styles differed, with one placing more emphasis on the content and the other on the students' ways of thinking about that content. Results indicated that: (1) reasoning was taught and learned in academic classes; (2) such reasoning was subject-specific and embedded in the pragmatic routines of subject-driven lessons; (3) the specifications of such reasoning were implicit and therefore unavailable for overt use in lesson planning or as strategic knowledge to be taught; (4) this kind of discipline-specific reasoning may or may not be sufficient for successful participation in disciplinary learning; and (5) certain types of pedagogical approaches or styles may inhibit or support such discipline-appropriate thinking. Findings suggest the need for additional studies involving more teachers before explicit suggestions for the recasting of instruction along discipline-specific lines can be made. The categories identified may provide a useful place to start an investigation leading toward productive instructional reform. (Two tables of data are included; 39 references are attached.) (RS)

2024

The kind of literacy education currently valued in America has been ineffective in teaching more thoughtful literacy skills. A sociocognitive approach to literacy instruction focuses on developing the thinking skills that students will use as they engage in socially purposeful activities. Teachers, tests, and instructional materials in this approach emphasize not isolated bits of knowledge, but students' growing ability to use language and communication skills in more varied and reasoned ways. This approach to literacy instruction also maintains that (1) skills, structure, and routines are internalized en route to accomplishing purposeful and socially meaningful activities, and (2) the kinds of literate thinking that learners acquire is reflective of the social context in which literacy is learned. If schools are to teach higher levels of literate thinking, teachers must value and use these activities as part of the ongoing social-communicative fabric of the classroom. When this occurs, the nature of instructional activities will Shift from practice to application. In addition, literacy education will change its focus from reading and writing to ways of thinking appropriate to the demands of present society. (Included are examples of instruction from a sociocognitive perspective, such as logs, letter writing, uses of language, writing a newrpaper, and a prereading plan.) (JD)

2024

This journey to a doctoral degree would not have been possible without the support of a large community. I wish to thank the 2017 cohort, particularly the DLE team-Kanika Chopra, Tasha Coleman, Wanda Colon, Chelsea Jacoby, and Chris Zegar-for being a supportive group who offered research support and much needed comic relief. Thanks to Dr. Eli Silk who taught us to always evaluate our designs (#whereisthelearning). This mantra has kept me focused when tangents pulled me in the wrong direction. I am grateful for Dr. Angela O'Donnell for her endless guidance as my dissertation chair. Thank you, Dr. Ravit Duncan and Dr. Judith Harrison, for contributing your time, expertise, and insights as this study came together. To my longtime colleagues and friends, Amy Dell and Anne Disdier, thank you for endless moral and scholastic support. This journey would have been insurmountable without your encouragement and thoughtful recommendations. I deeply appreciate the insights you offered for refining and revising this study. You have been invaluable as proofreaders, supplementary coders, and cheerleaders. Thank you! I look forward to celebrating this accomplishment with you. To my parents who instilled a love of learning at an early age (S-TO -P says 'stop!'). I am eternally grateful for the constant support, guidance, and love you have provided as I worked to become the first in the family to earn a doctorate. To my daughters, Annie and Allie, thank you for tolerating endless times when I had to read, write, and study which meant you had to pick up the slack figuring out how to cook, scrub toilets, and run laundry. I hope the skills you developed serve you well, but more importantly, I hope you see all that can be accomplished when you have a dream and a strong AT FOR STRUGGLING READERS v support system. Now that this behemoth is written, we can return to game nights and movies (but you still have to help around the house!). Without question, my most sincere appreciation goes to my love, my husband Matthew, who provided a voice of reason, endless encouragement, support, and sanity. Without your organization, equal partnership, and financial finesse, this adventure would have been a million times more challenging and quite frankly, would have never come to fruition.

2024, Reading Research Quarterly

Teachers must first acquire the necessary media literacy skills, strategies, dispositions, and pedagogy to impactfully integrate media literacy into their instruction. Furthermore, previous studies have suggested designing curricular resources as an effective form of media literacy professional learning. This case study examined how high school teachers of different content areas integrate media literacy into their instruction while participating in an online professional development course and how high school teachers applied the content from a media literacy online professional development course to design media literacy instruction. Findings indicated teachers made minor changes to their previous instructional practice, which indicated that participating in the online course led them to think about media literacy integration in new ways. Additionally, teachers applied the online professional development content by using media to build background knowledge, offering explicit media literacy strategy instruction and support, promoting independent practice at the intersection of content curricula and media literacy, and assigning media production to demonstrate content knowledge. Recommendations include equipping teachers with media literacy background knowledge, examining instruction stemming from media literacy professional development, and empowering teachers to design media literacy instruction through critical lenses.

2024, International Journal of Applied Linguistics

This article takes a functional approach to discourse analysis in order to examine linguistic features of students' written discourse in secondary school mathematics. It focuses on the linguistic features utilized by the students to construct particular aspects of mathematical understanding, such as conceptual and procedural knowledge. Such an analysis can provide insights into how meanings are constructed linguistically at the discourse level and thus explicitly show the interdependence between the language used and the content explored and/or expressed in mathematics writing. The article addresses an issue that concerns both mathematics education and language education.