While the student population in public education is becoming more diverse, the representation of teachers of color remains low. With over half the student population in the United States considered as non-white, and only 20% of teachers identifying as teachers of color, it is imperative to examine the ways in which education professionals are…

Memorials and monuments represent a society's view of its own history and the conclusions we collectively wish to draw about its meaning. In America in recent years, public clashes over the presence of contested public memorials--including and especially monuments dedicated to the Confederate cause in the United States Civil War--have led to…

Black teachers have understood for centuries that whiteness is a requirement for full citizenship in the United States (Ladson-Billings, 1998). For this reason, Black teachers have historically taught Black students using emancipatory methods that centered their students' race and aided their students in navigating a landscape wrought with overt…

Based on Walter Mignolo's (2000) notion of border thinking, that is, the subaltern knowledge generated from the exterior borders of the modern/colonial world system, this article extends current conceptual frameworks for the implementation of a decolonizing border pedagogy with Latin@ students in secondary schools. In particular, Cervantes-Soon…

Paul Jablon's "The Synergy of Inquiry" (2014) is well-timed. The 2014 deadline set by No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) for universal student proficiency has come and gone, and according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, "proficiency rates last year were below 50 percent for nearly every racial and ethnic group, in…

To address the persistent failure of schooling to support underserved students, youth participatory action research (YPAR) has emerged as an alternative and critical paradigm for educational practice. YPAR re-centers authority on marginalized voices and understands research as a tool for social change. Grounded in critical pedagogy, such projects…

This study analyzed the perceptions of five high school English teachers of the efficacy of interactive word walls in high school classrooms. Through data collected during interviews and professional reflective journals, as well as the review of student artifacts, this article presents the themes that emerged from effective classroom teachers.…

This article examines our modern ways of schooling youth in light of philosophic and personal narrative accounts of "the Dionysian" aspect--a term the author uses to understand his own experiences and aspirations as a high school English teacher. Having articulated the meaning of this term, he goes on to point out how schools today are…

Instructional coaching runs the risk of being abandoned by policy makers and secondary schools if efficacy expectations related to adolescent literacy are not met (Knight, 2010; Walpole & McKenna, 2008). Research into coaching has examined the roles of coaches (Borman & Fenger, 2006; Smith, 2007) as well as the stances employed during…

We present three studies pertaining to learning, engagement and motivation during laboratory lessons in three high school biology classrooms. In the first, quantitative methods are used to compare students' in-the-moment reports of learning, engagement, and motivation during laboratory with other classroom activities. Data were collected with the…

This article reports results of a qualitative study conducted at a public "escuela secundaria" (U.S. grades 7, 8, and 9) in Guadalajara, Mexico, during the spring of 2010. As the second phase of an ongoing project, the main goal was to learn from direct classroom observation about the most prevalent teaching and institutional practices…

Secondary school teachers face remarkable challenges when they are asked to incorporate language objectives because the traditional approach to the education of English Language Learners (ELL) separates English language development from content instruction. The underlying assumption is that English language proficiency is a prerequisite for…

This article presents a case study of development of reading identity in Angelica, a 15 year old Latina. The paper explores the literacy experiences in school that positioned Angelica as a struggling reader. It also examines the efforts of significant others in school and out-of-school contexts, as well as her own efforts, to contest this…

Adopting a constructivist perspective of adolescent development, we argue adolescents' perceptions of "being known" reflect teachers' authentic recognition of adolescents' multiple emerging identities. As such, adolescent perceptions of being known are a distinct factor associated with high school students' engagement in school. A mixed…

This study analyzes the reporting of the September 11th terrorist attacks in social studies textbooks from a Muslim perspective and reports on findings from a study of the responses of American Muslim children to the treatment of the events of September 11th in social studies textbooks. Constructivist grounded theory was used to centralize the…