To address the persistent failure of schooling to support underserved students, youth participatory action research (YPAR) has emerged as an alternative and critical paradigm for educational practice. YPAR re-centers authority on marginalized voices and understands research as a tool for social change. Grounded in critical pedagogy, such projects…

Instructional coaching runs the risk of being abandoned by policy makers and secondary schools if efficacy expectations related to adolescent literacy are not met (Knight, 2010; Walpole & McKenna, 2008). Research into coaching has examined the roles of coaches (Borman & Fenger, 2006; Smith, 2007) as well as the stances employed during…

This article examines our modern ways of schooling youth in light of philosophic and personal narrative accounts of "the Dionysian" aspect--a term the author uses to understand his own experiences and aspirations as a high school English teacher. Having articulated the meaning of this term, he goes on to point out how schools today are…

We present three studies pertaining to learning, engagement and motivation during laboratory lessons in three high school biology classrooms. In the first, quantitative methods are used to compare students' in-the-moment reports of learning, engagement, and motivation during laboratory with other classroom activities. Data were collected with…

This article reports results of a qualitative study conducted at a public "escuela secundaria" (U.S. grades 7, 8, and 9) in Guadalajara, Mexico, during the spring of 2010. As the second phase of an ongoing project, the main goal was to learn from direct classroom observation about the most prevalent teaching and institutional practices…

Secondary school teachers face remarkable challenges when they are asked to incorporate language objectives because the traditional approach to the education of English Language Learners (ELL) separates English language development from content instruction. The underlying assumption is that English language proficiency is a prerequisite for…

This article presents a case study of development of reading identity in Angelica, a 15 year old Latina. The paper explores the literacy experiences in school that positioned Angelica as a struggling reader. It also examines the efforts of significant others in school and out-of-school contexts, as well as her own efforts, to contest this…

Adopting a constructivist perspective of adolescent development, we argue adolescents' perceptions of "being known" reflect teachers' authentic recognition of adolescents' multiple emerging identities. As such, adolescent perceptions of being known are a distinct factor associated with high school students' engagement in school. A mixed method…

This study analyzes the reporting of the September 11th terrorist attacks in social studies textbooks from a Muslim perspective and reports on findings from a study of the responses of American Muslim children to the treatment of the events of September 11th in social studies textbooks. Constructivist grounded theory was used to centralize the…

Before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005, one hundred and twenty one schools in the New Orleans Public Schools (NOPS) system were in the process of being transferred to the newly created, state run Recovery School District (RSD). On September 29, 2005, the New Orleans Parish School Board fired all 7500 employees, including every…

The authors extend the literature on multicultural democratic citizenship education (Marri, 2005) with a case study about how a highly esteemed high school teacher involved a heterogeneous group of students in a rigorous, engaging, critical study of U.S. History. Mr. Scott's teaching was noteworthy in its community building, thorough disciplinary…

In a world where students and the general public are likely to access historical information from a television program, film, or even video game, it is important to equip students with the ability to view historical representation critically. In this essay we present arguments for using film to engage students in rigorous and authentic social…

Culturally relevant pedagogy is not well understood as an instructional strategy in the mathematics classroom. This study reveals the challenges two teachers faced when they implemented a pilot project with ninth and tenth grade ESOL students. The task they envisioned as culturally relevant did not capture their ESOL student's interests; rather,…

Drawing from a multi-year ethnography of a Latino/a immigrant Pentecostal church and from high school observations and interviews of three focal students, this article compares the language and literacy experiences of an immigrant Mexican Pentecostal adolescent in church and school contexts. I document how the youth's Sunday school class fostered…

This article presents a vision of effective and pedagogically meaningful history teaching and learning in schools. Bringing to the fore the lack of attention to the philosophy of history, the article first explains the philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of history or the perspectives on the nature of historical knowledge on which the…