This article presents the text of Keith Gilyard's presidential address, delivered at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 18, 2012. In his address he proposes several core elements that he believes will instrumentally improve the education system in the United States: a rich…

In recent years, scholars have voiced the need for research which focuses on the ability of multilinguals to write across multiple languages rather than on the limitations that they face when composing in a non-native language. In order to better understand multilingual writers as resourceful and creative problem-solvers, the current study aims to…

In this article, I consider how subjectivities are composed and assessed within the boundaries of a career-focused portfolio program. First, by examining how portfolio composition is taught in senior English courses, I identify the qualities of the subject position students are called to occupy. Next, I present discourse analyses of portfolio…

In this article, I consider the literacy practices that emerged in an in-school elective course centered in the literacy tradition of African American women. Drawing from spatial perspectives (Leander& Sheehy, 2004), I explore what it means to consider this course an "Other space" (Foucault,1986), as a space created without the constraints of a…

This article examines how Black girlhood is constructed through fiction. The following research question guided this study: How do writers represent the heterogeneity of urban teenage girls in school-sanctioned African American young adult literature? Five popular narratives that exemplify the contemporary lives of urban African American female…

This study compares and contrasts the selection and distribution of literary texts in the English programs of two diverse secondary schools, one in Massachusetts, USA, the other in Ontario, Canada. Analysis of the departments' curriculum documents, state/provincial curriculum policies, and teacher interviews indicated that at both schools,…

This article illustrates the application of critical literacy (Freire & Macedo, 1987; Gutierrez, 2008; Morrell, 2007) pedagogies that draw from young people's funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) to actively nurture personally, authentically, and culturally caring relationships (Howard, 2002; Noddings, 1992; Valenzuela, 1999)…

The objective of this paper is to use psychoanalytic theory to examine how attempts at critical teaching in two English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms related to changes in student subjectivity. The research critiques critical pedagogical assumptions regarding transformation and empowerment through a Lacanian perspective. More specifically,…

This article reports a study of one high school senior's process of academic bullshitting as she wrote an analytic essay interpreting Shakespeare's "Much Ado about Nothing." The construct of bullshit has received little scholarly attention; although it is known as a common phenomenon in academic speech and writing, it has rarely been the subject…

This study examines discussions of model papers in a high school Advanced Placement English classroom where students were preparing for a high-stakes writing assessment. Much of the current research on talk about writing in various contexts such as classroom discourse, teacher-student writing conferences, and peer tutoring has emphasized the…

This four-year longitudinal study examines the transitions of an early-career teacher from her completion of a graduate program with English certification (grades 7-12) into teaching literature in an urban high school. Our central question was how Beth's pedagogical knowledge was shaped over time by her consistent efforts to enact two key…

This article is an exploration of how an alternative text reflects the multiple identities of one high school Latina, focusing in particular on her religious identity. In this ethnographic case study, the author addresses three questions: 1) In what ways does literacy activity inside the school, in the form of the science scrapbook, allow for this…

This teacher-researcher study explored the manner in which students created video compositions in a secondary English language arts media studies program. A review of research literature indicates fundamental differences between print and video compositions, which include modality of representation, task setting, and curricular role. Another…

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of Albert Bandura's four hypothesized sources of self-efficacy on students' writing self-efficacy beliefs (N = 1256) and to explore how these sources differ as a function of gender and academic level (elementary, middle, high). Consistent with the tenets of self-efficacy theory, each of the…

This study was conducted to obtain empirical data to inform policy decisions about exempting incoming students from a first-year composition (FYC) course on the basis of Advanced Placement (AP) English exam scores. It examined the effect of avoiding first-year writing on the writing abilities of sophomore undergraduates. Two three-page writing…