As Catholic schools serve an increasingly racially diverse population of students, they must grapple with the critical requirement to address these students' unique needs while heeding the call from modern Catholic Church leaders to engage in explicit antiracist action. Using the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework (HRL), this article…

Sexuality is both everywhere and nowhere in children's literature since it collides with an ideology of childhood innocence that works to erase childhood sexuality altogether. Debates about identity, self-expression, the boundary between childhood and adulthood--and attempts to police that boundary--often center on sexuality. Anxiety around…

This study analyses fifteen months of circulation data from a popular titles collection at a regional campus undergraduate library. To better understand how popular titles collections in academic libraries are used, this data analysis shows a breakdown of use amongst the entire campus population (students, faculty, and staff). Faculty are the most…

Picture books depicting LGBTI + families now form a significant sub-genre within children's literature. However, despite significant scholarship on representations of queer people in child and young adult literature generally, the way rainbow families are depicting in picture books, in particular, has received rather less attention. This paper…

Promising approaches to transforming English language arts classrooms into dialogic, democratic, and critical spaces for literature discussions involve the selection of compelling young adult literature (YAL) and the use of student-centered discussion strategies (e.g., literature circles). Scholars have demonstrated, however, the shortcomings of…

This article presents the results of a study carried out to explore the elements of Young Adult Literature (YAL) present in the prescribed texts for Malaysian secondary school English as a second Language (ESL) students (3rd cycle). The three novels studied were; "Captain Nobody" by Dean Pitchford, "Sing to the Dawn" by MinFong…

Purpose: This paper aims to connect disability studies to multicultural education. This paper advances equity discussions and positions educators as interrupters of deficit dialogues that exclude students with social/emotional/behavioural (SEB) differences, disrupting the ableism that is present in schools. Design/methodology/approach: The authors…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how participation in a multicultural literature course impacted K-12th classroom teachers' social justice pedagogy and classroom practices one to three years after completion of the course. Design/methodology/approach: This study investigated the effectiveness on teacher practices of a graduate…

The purpose of this case study was to investigate how an English language arts teacher used young adult literature to help English language learners improve English and literacy comprehension. Through the lens of Anzaldua's (2007) "borderlands", and Rolon-Dow's (2005) "critical care", the authors analyze the case study…

One place to start understanding how pre-service teachers learn about contemporary young adult (YA) literature, especially those works that feature lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ) and gender identity themes and characters, is through an examination of the YA literature course--a course many pre-service teachers take as…

Preparing students for college and careers in the 21st century has shed light on text complexity as an important variable for consideration in English Language Arts. Authors of The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) define text complexity as broad, highlighting qualitative, rather than quantitative evaluations of narrative fiction as appropriate…

Despite the importance of encouraging the development of recreational reading habits in secondary students, there is considerable evidence that many secondary schools implement instructional practices that negatively shape literary experiences. This study examined the recreational reading habits of secondary education majors, their knowledge of…

Characters with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have become increasingly popular in young adult literature. Using a case-study format, this article describes the communication, sensory, and social characteristics of eight protagonists in award-winning young adult novels. All told in the first person, these novels provide insight for young readers…

The current president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has consistently disparaged immigrants entering the U.S. but he has saved his most vitriolic language to describe undocumented immigrants who come from countries south of the U.S. border. He has called this Latinx population criminals, rapist, drug dealers, and animals among other…

Learn how to disrupt the reproduction of White supremacy in curriculum and instruction. This volume directly confronts persistent iterations of whiteness in English education through advancing antiracist dispositions and practices. Readers will find a variety of practical implementations of teaching and learning in English Language Arts, English…