This article presents case studies of three adolescent girls' literacy-related school experiences over a three-year period, focusing on the girls' own accounts of their instructional and institutional interactions. Drawing on poststructural and constructivist theories of positioning and identity, we explore how particular resources were put into…

In a speech to the NCTE Annual Convention in Pittsburgh PA, Randy Bomer presented his eloquent reflections on literacy education in these troubled times. The political impetus for control of the national literacy education policy rose mainly from the Christian right, and there is no significant opposition to it in the government.

In the current research climate favoring rigorous experimental studies of instructional scripts using randomly chosen treatment and control groups, education and literacy researchers and policy makers will do well to take stock of their current research base and assess critical issues in this new context. This review of research on classroom…

This article employs the concept of intersubjectivity to analyze developments in and discrepancies between students' understandings of criteria for effective writing and the criteria of their teacher. It reports on a study that employed qualitative methods of interview and classroom observation in conjunction with analysis of students' writing and…

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…

For more than a decade, the authors have been involved in research with students for whom English is not the home language, learning what children can do across a range of practices and contexts, and trying to understand better the various pathways and contextual supports that promote their literacy learning. In this work the authors have…

The basics of child writing, as traditionally conceived, involve "neutral" conventions for organizing and encoding language. This "basic" notion of a solid foundation for child writing is itself situated in a fluid world of cultural and linguistic diversity and rapidly changing literacy practices. In this paper, I aim to theorize and problematize…

Drawing on data from a multi-year digital storytelling project, this comparative case study offers portraits of two emerging authors--one a child and the other a young adult--who used multiple media and modes to articulate pivotal moments in their lives and reflect on life trajectories. The conceptual framework blends recent scholarship on…

Drawing on data gathered during a seven-month study of the literacy practices of a group of White, working-class girls who have successfully navigated their high school's English curriculum, this ethnography investigates (1) how gender and class influenced the girls' uses of literacy in the classroom and (2) how the girls used texts from English…

In our previous "At Last" essay, "The "Problem" of English Learners: Constructing Genres of Difference" (Gutierrez & Orellana, 2006), we identified a predictable genre that characterizes much research on English Learners. We noted how the genre may unwittingly perpetuate deficit constructions and keep us from identifying other issues for…

While academic discourse communities have been extensively studied as social contexts of forms/functions, and teachers, lessons, and students have been researched from every imaginable angle, the prevailing view of academic writing conventions is still quite normative. The conventions of the academy are often regarded as a stable collection of…

This annotated bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English addresses the following topics: (1) Discourse/Narrative Analysis/Cultural Difference; (2) Literacy; (3) Literary Response/Literature; (4) Reading; (5) Professional Development/Teacher Education; (6) Second Language Literacy; (7) Technology/Media; and (8) Writing.

The authors gave the following talk at the 2004 NCTE Annual Convention in Indianapolis upon receiving the Alan C. Purves Award, presented to the RTE article from the previous volume year judged most likely to have an impact on classroom practice ("The Road to Participation: The Construction of a Literacy Practice in a Learning Community of…

The research reported here examined word study as an approach to spelling instruction. In particular, the researchers investigated kindergarten children's transfer of specific words, word knowledge, concepts about print, and strategies for spelling unknown words to their self-selected journal writing. Results of the study indicated that the…

In this article, we present secondary students' perceptions of their writing and writing instruction. Using the NCTE/IRA Standards as the foundation for a survey, we questioned nearly 2,000 public-school students concerning what they wrote, how they wrote, and the extent to which they wrote in their language arts classes. We chose Florida as our…