In this paper, the authors present findings from a yearlong ethnographic research study that examines the development of critical literacy within two urban fourth grade classrooms in Tennessee. This study examines how young second language learners in English-dominant classrooms learn to read critically, write, and construct multimodal…

Given the prevalence of multimodal texts in today's world, it is not surprising that adolescent literacies are as dynamic, multimodal and visual as the texts with which they interact. As Kress & Van Leeuwen (1996) have outlined, the multimodal texts that make up a large percentage of our world consist of a range of modes (auditory,…

This article includes the script of a performance from the Communities of Inquiry Symposium at the Ethnography in Education Research Forum, March 1, 2014. The event invited audience members to imagine the relationship of the arts, multimodality, research, and critical pedagogy, through an evocation of a community of adolescents' and…

Practitioner research, as Ravitch (2014) writes in the previous issue of "Perspectives on Urban Education," holds the unique possibility of "generating local, practice-based knowledge that is deeply contextualized and meaningfully embedded in a specific milieu" while spurring a "counter-hegemonic way of thinking about and…

In recent years, researchers have called into question the efficacy of prescribed commercial curricula in early childhood classrooms (Genishi & Dyson, 2009). Despite these concerns, federally funded initiatives and such findings as those presented in the Report of the National Early Literacy Panel continue to promote scientifically based reading…

Existing evidence suggests that high stakes exams result in little increased learning among students. Yet, given the federal mandates for greater accountability, such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation and Race to the Top policies, and the "pervasive testing culture," the use of high-stakes tests is presently an accepted practice. The…

For educational philosopher and activist Paulo Freire, cultural circles are a way to generate critical conversations among "teacher-students" and "student-teachers" and can provide the motivation for critical consciousness and political action (1970). Both teachers and students learn from one another as their democratic dialogue provides a means…

In this article, the authors present a narrative that illuminates alternative visions for connecting K12/college collaborations, exploring the potential for social justice work at the intersection of K12 teaching and academia. Told as a collective autoethnography in narrative form, they recount their decisions to teach in K12 spaces, while…

The Roma, also known as gypsies or "tsinganoi," are amongst the oldest ethnic minorities in Europe. Nonetheless, they have been one of the most universally marginalized groups across all of the European nations. Their marginalization is evident in how Roma children have been treated in schools. Until recently, most nations have only offered them a…

This conversation between two educators begins by examining what brought them to their interest in looking at learning from an ethnographic perspective. Though they come from different viewpoints in regard to education, they agree that they got interested in ethnography through teaching. They discuss time, space, and language in relation to…