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Research on urban teacher education (UTE) programs have studied teacher candidates' (TCs) perceptions of urban communities and schooling, but have provided limited insights on how ideologies about dis/ability are entangled with race and other markers of difference, shaping TCs' learning about urban education. In this paper, we present an analysis drawn from a 2-year qualitative study that answers the following questions: What social categories of difference are present in a UTE program's curriculum? What ideologies related to dis/ability are utilized by TCs to describe urban education? We found that despite the UTE's program's strong emphasis on race and social justice, TCs not only drew from asset-based approaches but also from three interrelated ideologies of disablement to discuss students' behaviors: individualism, medical, and personal tragedy. We provide recommendations for UTE programs and research-based on an intersectional approach to teacher education that foregrounds dis/ability.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine playful practices in the science video composition of a fourth-grader. Design/methodology/approach: With an analytic interest in "chasing the theory of muchness" (Thiel, 2015a) that describes distinctive moments of affective energies in playful learning, the authors explored a child's video in which a food chain is dramatized. Findings: The authors identified how muchness manifested in/through her compositional play. Originality/value: The potential of playful composing and dramatizing to support meaning-making across contexts and disciplines is discussed.

Grounded in our commitment to support preservice teachers (PSTs) in an urban elementary teacher education program to develop anti-bias pedagogies, we engaged in a design-based study aimed at enacting critical conversations about texts that foster dialogue about power and privilege. In this analysis, we explore how PSTs engaged with children during discretionary moments within critical conversations in their field placements. We asked: "What generative orientations are visible in PSTs' analysis of and reflection on their facilitation of critical conversations with children?" Findings reveal that PSTs who extended dialogue during these moments in critical conversations--rather than avoiding or ignoring children's contributions--displayed an orientation toward seeing children as sensemakers; flexibly responded to encourage dialogue; and recognized the value of feeling uncomfortable.

There was a dramatic rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) have 'long struggled for belonging, safety, and equity [...]

School science continues to alienate students identifying with nondominant, non-western cultures, and learners of color, and considers science as an enterprise where success necessitates divorcing the self and corporeal body from ideas and the mind. Resisting the colonizing pedagogy of the mind-body divide, we aimed at creating pedagogical spaces and places in science classes that sustain equitable opportunities for engagement and meaning making where body and mind are enmeshed. In the context of a partnership between school- and university-based educators and researchers, we explored how multimodal literacies cultivated through the performing arts, provide students from minoritized communities opportunities to both create knowledge and to position themselves as science experts and brilliant and creative meaning makers. Four theoretical perspectives (social semiotics and multimodality; dramatizing and the embodied mind; dismantling master narratives for minoritized peoples; and the relationship of knowledge production and identity construction) framed this multiple case study of classes of elementary and middle school students who made sense of and communicated science concepts and practices through embodied performances. The study provided evidence that embodied science representations afford students abundant opportunities to construct science knowledge and positionings that support engagement with science, whether performed on a small scale in classrooms, or for the whole school through a large-scale science play. Embodied dramatizing led to opportunities for collective meaning making as student-performers coordinated across various movements and modes in order to represent ideas. Multiple enactments of the same concept nurtured the development of multi-dimensional scientific, sociocultural, and sociopolitical meanings. During embodiments, students positioned themselves and others in ways that allowed expanded science identities to become possible, intertwined with other salient identities. By treating children's bodies as sites of knowledge, imagination, and expertise, integrating performing arts and science has the potential to facilitate the development of connections among ideas and between self and ideas.

There have been numerous recent calls in literacy research and teacher education to disrupt the 'struggling reader' label, but a dearth of empirical studies on the topic. This qualitative analysis explores the complex issues preservice teachers (PSTs) faced as they examined young readers' sense-making through a reading assessment assignment. Our research question asked: How do PSTs challenge and/or reinforce the 'struggling reader' label as they examine young readers' sense-making? Using a conceptual lens that cross-pollinates dynamic models of reading comprehension with Disability Studies in Education, we look across three cases to identify ways PSTs challenged and reinforced the 'struggling reader' label as they examined intermediate-grade readers' interactions with texts. Ultimately, we argue that embracing a dynamic model of comprehension--on its own--is an insufficient focus in literacy teacher education in order to disrupt harmful labeling practices in schools.

Discussions about texts can offer valuable opportunities for critical conversations about power and privilege. While we know such conversations are important to have in school, many teachers report feeling unprepared to facilitate them. In an effort to understand the in-the-moment decisions preservice teachers (PSTs) make in response to children's contributions during critical conversations about texts, this qualitative, design-based study examines how PSTs responded to elementary-age children while facilitating discussions about texts in their field placements. Although various kinds of responses were made (e.g., eliciting children's thinking, orienting children's contributions to one another), in this analysis, we examine the moments where PSTs identified their silence as salient. Findings reveal that (1) some PSTs developing understanding of the role of talk and desire to efficiently accomplish the task did not seem to set them up to see critical conversations about texts as a space for sensemaking, and (2) other PSTs did see critical conversations about texts as spaces to engage in sensemaking but felt discomfort grappling with unanticipated issues that arose. We discuss implications for literacy researchers and teacher educators committed to supporting critical conversations with children in schools.

Cooperating teachers are vital in the professional development of teacher candidates. Yet, little research has been done to explore the generative and bidirectional nature of mentoring in the context of a student teaching-mentoring dyad--including the ways that teacher candidates are vital to the professional development of cooperating teachers. This case study addresses this gap by exploring the realized potential of adopting a transformative activist stance in relation to the mentoring of a preservice teacher candidate. The strategic partnering of a veteran teacher (Rick) and undergraduate teacher candidate (Daniel)--both committed to culturally sustaining pedagogies--created an opportunity to reimagine the student teaching experience in one English language arts classroom. Through collaborative reflection and artifact analysis, we examine our roles in contributing to bidirectional mentorship that stressed innovative collaboration rather than adaptation to existing power differentials.

We think of our biannual Visions and Viewpoints issues as an 'unthemed' space that invites a broad range of ideas from across the spectrum of elementary literacy. While the articles [...]

In this issue, we were interested in considering how to cultivate more inclusive elementary classrooms. Questions we asked in the call for proposal included: How is dis/ability constructed in elementary [...]

'I am because I am connected.' These are the words leading the call for proposals for the 2023 NCTE Annual Convention, with the theme Conexiones: Communicate, Collaborate, Create. It goes [...]

We are proud to introduce the centennial volume of Language Arts journal with a brief reflection on the journal's first one hundred volumes. Language Arts originally appeared in 1924, under [...]

We are humbled and excited that this issue will close out our first volume as editors. We have learned a lot and sought to grow our editorial team's practices and [...]

In our editorial team's inaugural issue in September 2021, we focused on the theme of antiracist pedagogies in elementary classrooms, setting an intention to return to it midway and at [...]

This issue bookends the centennial volume of Language Arts journal. In this notable volume's introductory issue in September 2022, we reflected on the journal's contributions. Over the last hundred years, [...]

Twice a year, we invite submissions that offer a variety of viewpoints and visions about topics, concerns, and issues that you think are important to today's readers of Language Arts. [...]

The article focuses on the efforts of an elementary and middle school educator, Ashley Stanley, to cultivate sustainable futures through climate education. Topics include integrating climate change into the curriculum through diverse pathways such as literature and local activism, promoting curiosity and humility in teaching, and addressing students' emotional responses to climate issues.

As educators, we know that the struggle is at times all too real. Despite valiant attempts to string together successful lessons, units, and experiences, there are times when we fall [...]

We--Dr. Sandra L. Osorio (Illinois State University), Dr. Rebecca Woodard (University of Illinois at Chicago), Rick Coppola (Chicago Public Schools and University of Illinois at Chicago), and Dr. Kara Taylor [...]

Science education is often neglected in elementary teaching, where reading and math are highly tested and prioritized. But science provides one avenue to engage children's profound curiosity about their natural [...]

In this issue, we invited submissions about the linguistic resources of children. We hoped to learn about instructional practices that welcome the use of multiple languages and dialects in the [...]

The article focuses on introducing readers to William Peek, a middle school humanities teacher in Chicago, who incorporates climate justice learning in his teaching. Topics include making glocal connections to understand local and global impacts of climate change, using texts to cultivate critical civic empathy, and layering interdisciplinary texts to support inquiry-based learning about urgent topics like climate justice.

In honor of this month's annual conference theme of !Suenos! Pursuing the light!, we offer this unthemed issue exploring some of the ways educators are 'growing out of the dark [...]

The article introduces a three-part series focused on climate justice learning in elementary and middle school English language arts (ELA) classrooms. Topics include inspiring young learners' love for the Earth, utilizing picturebooks as conversation and action catalysts, and emphasizing the importance of building educators' climate knowledge through literature and direct experiences with nature.

Learning on the Move is a framework for study and design (Marin et al., 2020) that draws across different fields with interests in learning across space, place, and time. Learning [...]

Joy is crucial for social change; joy is crucial for teaching. Finding joy in the midst of pain and trauma is the fight to be fully human. A revolutionary spirit [...]

For this unthemed issue, we invited submissions that offer a variety of viewpoints and visions about topics, or issues that you think are important to today's readers of Language Arts. [...]

An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss articles within the issue on various topics, including an analysis of biographies of former U.S. President George Washington, a framework that would help support elementary teachers in fostering approaches to civic learning, and the use of a humanizing orientation by a language arts teacher to foster civil discourse.

This column supports the development of urgent pedagogies about climate justice learning in elementary and middle school ELA classrooms. In each issue, we explore practical ways elementary teachers can engage young people to read, compose, learn about, and act on climate justice. This column is the second part of a three-part series where we share picturebooks that can support learning with children about central themes of climate education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on urban teacher education (UTE) programs have studied teacher candidates' (TCs) perceptions of urban communities and schooling, but have provided limited insights on how ideologies about dis/ability are entangled with race and other markers of difference, shaping TCs' learning about urban education. In this paper, we present an analysis drawn from a 2-year qualitative study that answers the following questions: What social categories of difference are present in a UTE program's curriculum? What ideologies related to dis/ability are utilized by TCs to describe urban education? We found that despite the UTE's program's strong emphasis on race and social justice, TCs not only drew from asset-based approaches but also from three interrelated ideologies of disablement to discuss students' behaviors: individualism, medical, and personal tragedy. We provide recommendations for UTE programs and research-based on an intersectional approach to teacher education that foregrounds dis/ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]