This article investigates the identity construction process of China's rural-urban migrant children through analyses of their discourses and of their use of language. Rural children have relocated to the urban centers with their parents on a massive scale over the past decades as China has undergone rapid economic changes. Many migrant children…

Drawing on the recent call for repositioning youth as creative and responsible agents in language and education research (e. g., McCarty & Wyman, 2009) and the notion of engaged ethnography (e.g., Davis & Phyak, 2015), the researcher engaged 16 minority student youth in a remote mountainous province in Vietnam in interrogating the…

Native English speaking language teachers who live and work in various parts of the world often express a desire to learn the language of their host country. Without sustained levels of motivation, however, their desires are unlikely to be realized. This article reports the findings of a longitudinal case study of an American English language…

Given that it is a delicate task to meet the educational needs of adult emergent readers in a second language setting, this study serves to explore the teaching practice of teachers working with learners of initial literacy and second language. Based on a situated learning perspective, data from 16 lesson observations of nine teachers is analysed.…

During the last decade, Sweden has witnessed a significant increase in public attention concerning the following interrelated linguistic phenomena: (a) a linguistic style labelled "Rinkeby Swedish," (b) specific "Rinkeby Swedish words" that have been perceived as disparaging in Swedish public debate, and (c) a specific young…

This article explores the ways in which transmediation (Suhor, 1984), the translation of meaning from one sign system into another, can support students in developing their confidence and capabilities as readers. The author, a 10th grade English teacher, details a literature workshop (Blau, 2003) unit in which students worked collaboratively to…

This essay details what we, three White teacher-researchers, learned about how one class of fourth grade children interacted with signs such as castles, forts, and walls through a three-day improvisational workshop aimed at fostering critical literacy skills. Theories and methods of improvisational theatre offer a distinct way to approach critical…

Critical literacy works to make readers aware of the explicit and implicit ideologies present in texts. Engaging in critical reading helps readers recognize and interrogate ideologies in texts in order to be more informed readers. This action research study examined the development of critical literacy skills in 19 prospective elementary teachers…

In this article, we present three example lessons focused on intentionally developing preservice teacher (PST) knowledge of culturally responsive teaching in each of our literacy courses. We use culturally responsive teaching as a framework to expand PSTs beyond surface level thinking of diversity by modeling specific literacy practices that…

The purpose of this yearlong study was to examine literate identity development of first-grade students in a student-centered, literature-based classroom where meaning making was privileged over decoding skills. This cross-case analysis traced the identity trajectories of two case studies: one student with strong decoding skills (above grade level…

This article describes a recent practitioner-research study of secondary preservice teachers' development of literacy instruction in a content area literacy course at a large university in the Southwest United States. The study utilized a sociocultural approach that focused on discipline-specific literacy practices that define what it means to be…

An extensive body of research focuses on early-career and pre-service teacher identities, with the underlying assumption that veteran teachers are entrenched in particular mindsets and thus, less likely to explore or learn from social justice pedagogies. Guided by Crenshaw's concept of a "single-axis framework," the authors argue in this…

This study explores the processual identity formation of six Japanese women who gave up a job, turned to higher education, and became university EFL teachers in Japan. My research questions include: (1) How did they change their careers and become university EFL teachers? (2) Since they entered the university EFL teaching profession, how have they…

This inquiry examines how district English Learner (EL) leaders negotiate and shape their linguistic and racial identities within the landscape of racially desegregated urban school districts. Girded by the theory of LangCrit, an intersection between critical language studies (CLS) and Critical Race Theory (CRT), this study illuminates how EL…

This article was prompted by my experience teaching a Japanese university English course in which students journaled about their English learning. In doing so, they drew heavily upon perceived membership in an imagined community associated with being Japanese as a means to explain their relationship with English. Analyzing this body of students'…