This article presents data from two yearlong ethnographic studies of the biliteracy instruction and development of young Latina/o children in two counter-hegemonic English immersion classes in the English-only milieu established by California's Proposition 227. The author first describes the struggle that the teachers engaged in as they sought to…

This article presents partial findings of an ethnographic study in a Quechua rural community in the Peruvian Andes. It discusses the uses of hegemonic Spanish literacy practices in the school. These were characterized by emphasis on formal issues over meaning; students lives, cultural, and linguistic resources were ignored. However, there were…

This study examines the biliteracy development of a group of bilingual Latino third graders in an elementary school in the south-west USA. It focuses on the role of language in children's reading comprehension of narrative texts in Spanish and English in a school context. The authors frame their analysis within the "Continua of Biliteracy" model…

This qualitative study investigated the writing processes of eight emergent bilingual children as they composed stories in two languages in a Writing Workshop (WW) context. The research was situated in two grade 1 classrooms in a Spanish/English Two-Way Bilingual Education program in the north-eastern USA. For six months, researchers observed…

This is a personal account of the author's naivete, growth, and hope as a literacy educator after she left her position as a university professor to teach reading to young adolescents. She describes how her experience and academic expertise did not fully prepare her for the realities of working in a middle school and how she became more aware of…

The author studied the literacy practices and perceptions of vocational educators, interviewing and observing them extensively for seven years. The vocational teachers used just as many texts as academic teachers, but used them "differently"--and although they used complex technical manuals, trade publications, schematics, diagrams, graphic…

Because revising can feel overwhelming even for competent writers, the author designed the Focused Question Card (FQC) strategy to ease students through a critically important aspect of the writing process--revision. The strategy is ideal for writing intended as thoughtful reflection of thinking over time and can be used with students from fourth…

Ten years ago the first author and colleagues decided to publish a list of the topics in literacy that were (or had been) receiving attention in the reading field in general education publications such as the widely read journal "Educational Leadership," and in the popular media (Cassidy & Wenrich, 1997). Despite the popularity of the list, many…

The authors introduce manga to educators, inspired by the comics' explosive entry into U.S. popular culture. The word "manga" refers specifically to printed, Japanese-style comics found in graphic-novel format--not to be confused with "anime" (animated Japanese cartoons, including moving images on television, movies, video games). There are two…

The teaching and learning of phonics are core elements of a balanced literacy program for people with intellectual disabilities. Studies have shown that individuals who have limited phonic and decoding skills will be unlikely to progress in their reading ability beyond an emergent level and are more likely to experience difficulty in…

This bibliography was compiled for the 2006 Summer Institute at The Centre for Literacy-"Accountability and Public Trust: Restoring the Balance." The selections include lectures, research studies, policy papers, and government documents that describe and analyze recent concepts of accountability in the context of government funding in…

This article reports on a study that examines the effects of metacognitive reading strategy instruction on reading performance of adult ESL learners with limited English and literacy skills. The strategy instruction was implemented over a period of four months with a group of 18 learners who were enrolled in a high beginning literacy course in an…

Resilient readers are those who, despite their poor phonological decoding skills, have good comprehension abilities (Jackson & Doellinger, 2002). Thus far, these readers have been identified in college settings. The purpose of this study was to a) determine if this reader profile was present in a sample taken from an Adult Basic Education (ABE)…

Many Western governments are looking to workplace literacy, language, and numeracy programs to address general skill improvement with a longterm aim of improving labor productivity. Rigorous research on these programs' effectiveness for both of these agendas, however, remains sparse and limited in scope. This article reports the findings of an…

The American adult education and literacy movement in the early twentieth century had its roots deep in the study and practice of democracy (Ramdeholl, Giordani, Heaney, Yanow, 2010). From Lindeman, Dewey, Laubach, Horton, to Heaney and Brookfield, a persistent theme is the indispensable relationship between democracy and adult education. For…