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We compare the institutional standards and expectations for English language arts (ELA) educators from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the leading professional organization in this field, and the state of Georgia. By conducting a critical policy analysis of documents from NCTE and the Georgia Department of Education (GADoE) we sought to understand the tension between standards set for training English education students in institutions of higher education and the standards those teachers would be required to use in Georgia K-12 schools. We analyze these documents through Cooper et al.'s (2004) policy analysis framework, which questions the normative, structural, constituent, and technical dimensions of policy development. We found that the ideological beliefs and values embedded in the policies and documents from NCTE and GADoE have developed divergent sets of expectations for ELA teachers in Georgia, particularly around how teachers respond to oppression in our society; how we understand the overall purpose of ELA instruction; and the scope of responsibilities for educators. We end by presenting implications for educators working among these two sets of policies, in recognizing where these expectations may overlap as well as diverge.

The Science of Teaching Reading (STR) has received increasing attention as states continue to pass educational policy initiatives grounded in STR research. One major change resulting from STR policies is the heavy focus on the systematic instruction of phonics. Texas in particular has seen sweeping changes to their preservice teacher (PST) certification requirements, resulting in teacher education programs (TEPs) having to adjust their literacy preparation coursework in response to these changes. This shift leaves questions surrounding the potential displacement of other literacy practices in TEPs, such as the use of children's literature. Standalone children's literature courses have been a staple in TEPs historically; however, these courses have been slowly eliminated in other states as STR policies are adopted. Therefore, the present study uses content analysis methodology to understand how children's literature is positioned alongside the newly adopted STR policies in Texas. Through the examination of course descriptions and syllabi of literacy coursework, this content analysis seeks to determine the number of TEPs maintaining a standalone children's literature course and the primary focus of these courses. Additionally, the current study investigates how children's literature is being positioned in other literacy coursework to teach STR principles. The implications can provide TEPs as well as teacher educators insight on the repositioning of children's literature within coursework, as children's literature can serve a valuable role in the teaching of reading.

Scholars of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) advocate discussion as a promising instructional method yet rarely specify how such discussions should be conducted. Facilitating classroom discussions is highly challenging, particularly about emotions. Furthermore, the SEL literature contains contradictory discursive imperatives; it typically overlooks the gaps between students' and teachers' emotional codes and how these codes are shaped by culture, class, and gender. The current study explores different ways in which teachers facilitate classroom dialogue about emotions. We analyze data drawn from a two-year ethnographic study conducted as part of a design-based implementation research project aimed at fostering productive dialogue in primary language arts classrooms, looking in particular at two lessons centered around a story about crying. We found two different interactional genres for discussions about emotions: (1) inclusive emotional dialogue, in which students share emotions experienced in their everyday lives; (2) emotional inquiry, in which students explore emotions, their expressions, and their social meanings. Both types of discussion generated informative exchanges about students' emotions. Yet the discussions also put the teacher and students in challenging positions, often related to the need to navigate between contradictory discursive norms and emotional codes.

Following the emergence of chatbots, especially ChatGPT, researchers have begun to examine their capabilities, credibility, and reliability in educational context. In this study, ChatGPT and Google Gemini are used as technological tools to create 7th-grade lesson plans for mathematics, science, literature, and social studies classes. Using prompts, these chatbots were asked to create lesson plans for the desired course, subject, and level. The data source of this study is the content produced by these chatbots. We analyzed 18 lesson plans to identify patterns and variations within the context of learning theories and models by using the Taguette qualitative analysis program. The results show that the lesson plans created by both chatbots are strongly resemblance to human-written educational content such as sentence structures, lesson activities, and assessments. Although the activities in all lesson plans defined teachers as facilitators and offered partially constructive lesson plans, it was found that the technology-integrated activities were very limited. The findings of this study provide a practical implication of chatbots for teachers and highlights educational considerations when integrating these tools into lessons.

This comparative case study explores the roles of reading-to-write and writing-only approaches on students' L2 writing skills. Six third-year English major students from a Thai university, with diverse proficiency levels, participated in the study. Data from students' writing samples, semi-structured interviews, and observations were analyzed through quantitative and qualitative methods. The two approaches contributed differently to enhancing students' English writing skills. The writing-only approach significantly improved grammatical accuracy, while the reading-to-write approach fostered the use of more complex grammar structures, particularly in argumentative writing. In terms of coherence and cohesion, both approaches proved equally productive. Language proficiency, learning styles, task demands, essay types, topic familiarity, and time limitations also impacted the utilization of each approach. These insights suggest a blended approach to teaching writing at the university level, integrating both reading and writing elements. However, the findings also underscore the importance of explicit instruction in grammar and reading to support students in developing robust writing skills.

This study examined the perceptions of participants regarding the use of embedded video demonstration lessons during literacy professional development sessions. The videos were captured in an urban elementary classroom and modeled two new literacy strategies. Based on survey responses from 160 kindergarten through fifth grade elementary school teachers and 117 school or district administrators and instructional specialists, the findings revealed positive participant perceptions and effective instructional use of the videos that modeled the implementation of the strategies in a relevant classroom setting. The analysis of the use of videos during the professional development (PD) sessions was found to positively affect the instructional capacity of teachers to implement the strategies in their classroom settings. The findings also suggest that school administrators more positively understood the process of using the strategies to support the standards, resulting in increased leadership capacity. Implications of using specifically created videos to enhance clarity and credibility of PD for participants are discussed.

This study examines the impact of teachers' professional development on Canadian allophone students' learning and reading performance levels. We used the data from the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program 2016 involving Grade 8/Secondary II Canadian allophone students (N = 2,244) and teachers in French and English Language Arts (N = 598). Our correlation results show that Canadian allophone students' reading achievement was positively associated with teachers' professional development activities such as academic pursuits (e.g., university courses) and marking or scoring sessions. The correlations also demonstrate that teachers' professional practice of curriculum development had a positive influence on the learning levels of Canadian allophone students who were born in Canada, while teachers' participation in professional learning communities had a positive effect on Canadian allophone students who were not born in Canada.

This study attempts to analyze the innovation of learning media in elementary schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. This library and field research has the data collected from Google Scholar database concerning scientific articles about innovative learning media in elementary schools during the pandemic. The data were collected using the keyword "Innovation of SD learning media". They were taken from 359 data: 280 Indonesian version and 79 Inglish versio. The data were classified into Indonesian, Natural Science, Social Sciences, and Mathematics, Civics, and Thematic subjects.There are more technology-based media than non-technology-based media. The types of media used in this research are video media, games, books, PowerPoint, and concrete objects used in the six subjects focusing on research. Based on the frequency and quantity of instructional media, the researchers recommend that the Indonesian language subjects use books, videos, and concrete objects. In science subjects, video learning media, PowerPoint, and books are used. In social studies subjects, games, videos, and concrete objects are used. In the Mathematics subject, media games, videos, and concrete objects are used. In PKN (Civics) subjects, video learning media, ICT, and comics are used. In thematic learning, video learning media, games, and books are used.

The purpose of this qualitative participatory research study was to explore what happens when English language arts (ELA) preservice teachers collaborate to develop multimodal, intersectional, and critical feminist empowerment literacy curricula. This study centered on the following research question: How do ELA preservice teachers make sense of how pop-cultural, multimodal texts such as VSCO stickers frame girlhood and womanhood? Multiple data were collected: audio and video recording transcripts of monthly Saturday workshops, artifacts, such as curriculum writing and workshop photographs, researcher journals, analytic memos, and a shared Google Drive of written student thinking. The constant comparative method was used to analyze and triangulate the data. Analyses of data revealed that preservice teachers were able to critically analyze consumerism relating to VSCO stickers and girlhood and were able to notice how stickers typecast and reify individualism while also navigating authenticity during self-selection and categorizing stickers. Additionally, data analysis demonstrated how critical literacies played a role in the preservice teachers' understanding of how several groups, communities, and individual voices were not recognized in the marketing and consumption of VSCO sticker packaging as well as providing additional gender biases in society.

This systematic literature review presents a review of the effects of integrated language arts, science and technology (ILS&T) instruction, with an inquiry- or design-based pedagogy, in elementary schools on student achievement. To this end, an overview of the characteristics of the 19 included studies and their interventions is first presented. Second, the effects of interventions in relation to the study characteristics and outcome variables were examined, by comparing the mean effect sizes. The findings demonstrate positive effects of ILS&T instruction for all reported student learning outcome variables. Third, the relation between characteristics of the intervention and effect sizes was analysed. Interventions with higher levels of integration, a short duration, and teacher professional development activities produce higher effect sizes. These findings are relevant for the design of ILS&T interventions. The analysis was challenged by a lack of detailed information in study and intervention descriptions, which prompts a call for scholars to provide more comprehensive information in their intervention studies.

Background: In the past decades, there has been a growing concern to understand why boys struggle in school. One of the turning points in students' educational trajectories likely to exacerbate boys' academic difficulties is students' enrolment in private or enriched school programmes, as boys are underrepresented in such programmes. Method: To better understand this gender imbalance, our research draws on a longitudinal design to examine whether grade 6 students' externalizing behaviours, school engagement and school grades in mathematics and language arts relate to secondary school programme attendance, among a sample size of 577 students (277 boys). Results: Path analysis showed that only language arts grades predicted enrolment in private or selective public programmes and contributed to boys' underrepresentation in these programmes. Conclusions: Such findings have important implications for understanding boys' underachievement and low persistence in school as well as to guide interventions to promote gender and overall educational equity in school.

Drawing on the experiences of teaching Beloved in an elite, college preparatory context, the following research paper works towards alternative approaches to teaching trauma and difficult histories. After exploring some of the limitations and applications of the education as séance approach, this paper constructs a framework for teaching difficult histories modeled after Toni Morrison's description of The Clearing, a place of embodied, radical subjectivity, and personal transformation within a community of love and support.

Engaging students in the reading process is challenging when they are unable to connect to texts. It is important to provide inclusive and diverse texts (IDTs) in the language arts curriculum. To promote a positive reading experience, all students need to read IDTs with non-stereotypical depictions of girls, women, people of Color, and more. This is challenging when obstacles such as limited resources, a lack of teacher preparation to meet challenges, and stakeholder opposition to "non-traditional" literature may hinder educators' efforts to include IDTs. Using effective instructional strategies, increasing home and school literacy connections, and providing focused teacher training can help overcome these obstacles. Literary texts that reflect multiple identities will promote a more equitable representation of all students within the classroom community. This paper discusses possible strategies and approaches for including and engaging with IDTs and resources educators can use to address instructional challenges and find high-quality texts.

In this discussion, we argue for those who are literacy educators to reframe gossip as a dialogic, feminist act in their teaching and interpretation of gossip as framed in the literature they teach in secondary English language arts (ELA) classrooms. Reframing gossip as a feminist act invites meaning-makers to view those conversations and generative dialogues discursively gendered in deficit ways (or gossip) as proactive, productive, and powerful tools of connection between and within societies and communities. We share how we centered and created through a critical feminist lens, an ELA curriculum that supports gossip as a literary tool that drives narratives in plot formation, as well as a means to enhance characters' positions, personalities, allies, and enemies within a story. Most importantly, we use gossip as an analytical tool to reframe and promote gender equity, guiding preservice teachers and adolescents in critical analysis of the innumerable ways systems and institutions of power and privilege -- such as race, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality -- intersect in the fight for gender equality. First, we will discuss our guiding theoretical framework of critical feminist pedagogy to examine the ELA curriculum. Next, we share how the development of a curricular unit on reframing gossip in literature unfolded organically through a monthly Saturday workshop called "Writing Us In: Developing Critical Literacy Curriculum for ELA Classrooms." Then, we showcase how one preservice ELA teacher applied the critical feminist lenses examined within the workshop space to develop a linked text set and subsequent ELA curricular unit with the aims of her future students to critically analyze, from a feminist lens, how gossip is portrayed in society and how it is framed in literature. We end with a discussion of how our spotlight student reflects on this project and her key takeaways.

Augmented reality (AR) technology has opened up new possibilities for interactive and immersive learning experiences, where students can visualize abstract concepts and engage with digital objects in real-time. In this study, a real-time AR-based system is developed and, unlike other studies, incorporates sound effects that will play when the object is detected to support the teaching of English words to primary school students. Using the You Look Only Once (YOLO) v4 algorithm and the Common Objects in Context (COCO) dataset, the system was trained to detect objects with high accuracy. The proposed system was tested on 40 primary school students for 8 weeks and compared their learning outcomes with a control group using traditional teaching methods. According to the experimental results, students utilizing the AR-based system achieved an impressive 90% success rate in the end-of-term exam, whereas the control group attained a success rate of 65%. Our study demonstrates the potential of AR technology to enhance children's motivation and engagement in learning the English language.

This report presents results from a survey of 64 elementary mathematics and reading language arts teacher educators providing feedback on a new type of short performance task. The performance tasks each present a brief teaching scenario and then require a short performance as if teaching actual students. Teacher educators participating in the study first reviewed six performance tasks, followed by a more in-depth review of two of the tasks. After reviewing the tasks, teacher educators completed an online survey providing input on the value of the tasks and on potential uses to support teacher preparation. The survey responses were positive with the majority of teacher educators supporting a variety of different uses of the performance tasks to support teacher preparation. The report concludes by proposing a larger theory for how the performance tasks can be used as both formative assessment tools to support teacher learning and summative assessments to guide decisions about candidates' readiness for the classroom.

Scholars have long recognized that reading in digital spaces requires unique skills, strategies, and competencies in comparison to those needed for reading printed text. In recent years, the ubiquity of social media and algorithmically targeted content has radically changed the nature of online reading and meaning making. Technological changes have occurred simultaneously with radically altered sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts. To account for an altered technological and sociocultural landscape, new approaches to teaching digital reading and critical media literacy are needed. Addressing these concerns, this case study detailed a digital reading curriculum designed to be responsive to both the contemporary digital media environment and to students' out-of-school digital literacy practices and contexts. The curriculum was collaboratively designed by five middle-school language arts teachers who participated in a semester-long professional learning group focused on digital reading. Drawing upon sociocultural, asset-based, and culturally relevant philosophies of education, these five teachers designed a unique digital reading curriculum. This study examined the nature of this curriculum. The findings detailed four aspects of the teachers' unit: (1) digital reading instruction situated within students' literate lives; (2) critical instruction regarding systemic features of the internet such as algorithms and clickbait; (3) lessons in which students interrogate socially situated meaning making; and (4) lessons focused on the role of emotions while reading online. The findings have implications for future digital reading and media literacy curricula intended to be responsive to students' funds of knowledge, ever-changing literacy technologies, and new, emergent ways of reading and practicing literacy on the internet.

There is currently a debate as to whether academic content at kindergarten crowds out time spent in creative arts, free play, and physical activity. Analyzing kindergarten teachers' reports of their instruction from the ECLS-K:2011, this study examined whether core academic content or advanced academic content in math or English language arts (ELA) displaces time spent in creative arts, indoor free play, and physical activity. The results suggested that neither core academic content nor advanced academic content in either subject displaced physical activity. More time spent on advanced math and advanced ELA was associated with more time spent on creative arts. However, teachers who reported spending more time on advanced math also reported spending less time on indoor free play.

Argumentation is a fundamental communicative ability that children develop over time through formal schooling and daily practice with peers and family members. Literature on children's argumentation appears to have focused on their social interactions out of school, clinical environment, or informal pedagogic contexts. Even though there are research inquiries into children's argumentation in formal academic learning, many have been focused on argumentative writing in math or science classes. Much less is known about teacher-led argumentation and the youngest children's emerging argumentation in language art classes, where argumentation is formally and systematically introduced and learned. This paper reports a year-long ethnographic study on argumentation in a first-grade English language art classroom in the United States. Ethnographic discourse analysis was conducted to analyze two key literacy events from the daily reader's and writer's workshop. It is supplemented with qualitative analysis of the researchers' field notes and the students' artifacts. Our findings highlight the inherent intertextual nature of children's argumentation and a critical role the teacher played in eliciting and steering the children's argumentation construction through strategic instructional conversations (especially accountable talk). Our findings also revealed teacher-led children's intertextual argumentation as a powerful heuristic process and tool to enrich students' learning. The paper concludes some classroom argumentation teaching practices based on the research findings.

The study was a pilot intervention to develop Year 5-8 students' close reading and writing of literary texts using the T-Shape Literacy Model (Wilson and Jesson in Set Res Inf Teach 1:15-22, 2019). Students analysed text sets to explore how different authors use language to engender mood and atmosphere. The study used a single-subject design logic for repeated researcher-designed and a quasi-experimental, matched control group design for repeated standardised measures of reading and writing. Nine teachers and their classes participated. The schools were part of a large school improvement programme using digital tools and pedagogy to accelerate students' learning participated that the authors were research-practice partners in. The schools all served low socio-economic status communities and the majority of students were Maori (51%) and Pacific (28%). There was a large effect size on the overall score for the researcher-designed measure (effect size = 1.00) and for the close reading of single texts sub-score (effect size = 0.90). There was a moderate-to-high effect for students' identification of language features (effect size = 0.75) but no significant effect on their synthesis scores. Students in the intervention significantly outperformed matched control group students in the standardised writing post-test (effect size = 0.65) but differences for the standardized reading comprehension test were not significant (effect size = 0.15). Results overall suggest the approach has promise for improving the metalinguistic knowledge, literary analysis and creative writing of younger and historically underserved groups of students.

The objective of this study is to conduct an analysis of the social class representations in visual materials utilized in the English language textbook at the 9th-grade level during the 2022-2023 academic year in Turkiye. Employing a descriptive qualitative research design, data were obtained through the documentation method by scrutinizing visual content - encompassing images, drawings, and photographs - contained in the 9thgrade English language textbook published by the Ministry of National Education in 2022. The analytical framework to discern the social class representations in the visual content of the textbooks was drawn from Cunningsworth's (1995) approach. Social class depictions in the relevant textbook were analyzed searching for evidence of the presence of the following class related identities: governing/governed, worker/employer, oppressor/oppressed, impoverished/affluent, rural/urban, skilled/unskilled, unemployed/unemployed/jobless, homeowner/tenant/homeless, migrant/refugee, and the wealth levels of nations. The goal was to demonstrate social inequalities and class distinctions through these criteria. The findings of the research revealed qualitative examples of social inequality and imbalance within the visual materials of the textbook. The representation of social classes in the examined textbook predominantly reflects the images and values of the middle class. The visual depictions of social class tend to feature professions representing the upper and middle social classes, with a notable absence of occupations associated with the lower social class. In light of these outcomes, it is suggested that in addition to presenting an ideal social life for students, textbooks should incorporate visuals that authentically portray social classes and relationships.

This study documents secondary pre-service teachers (PSTs) who examined Black Lives Matter (BLM)-themed young adult literature (YAL) embedded in contemporary realistic fiction and graphic novels, as part of coursework for an online YAL course required for secondary teacher certification. An analysis of instructor mentoring, online discussions, literature evaluations, and interviews demonstrates enhanced awareness of the need to implement BLM-themed literature, against the grain of rigid curricular requirements and policies that ban critical race theory (CRT) dialogue in numerous school districts. Moreover, PSTs identified these texts as a source to guide CRT to raise awareness of the history and permanence of systemic racism and its influence on contemporary society and the implementation of culturally relevant literature.

A major challenge for juvenile correctional facilities (JCF) is providing literacy instruction to a transitory student population with a wide range of literacy abilities. The purpose of this study was to identify unique literacy profiles of students in long-term JCF taking into consideration their reading abilities, language abilities, intelligence quotient (IQ), disability classification, age, and grade level. Using latent profile analyses with a sample of 370 in the southeastern United States, we identified three distinct classes. Three ability groups of students (average literacy abilities, below-average literacy abilities, substantially below-average literacy abilities) were identified. Thirty-six percent performed at the average level, 55% performed below grade level; and 8% had substantial literacy deficits with an overrepresentation of students with emotional disturbance (ED) and specific learning disability (SLD). Findings provide the foundation for an evidence-based multi-tiered system of supports literacy framework within JCF. Instructional implications concerning the provision of English Language Arts in JCF are provided.

The university curriculum has been urged to incorporate 21st-century digital competence and skills, particularly information literacy, in accordance with recommendations made by numerous organizations, including the Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Instructors are then considered true facilitators in this sense. Therefore, recent studies investigated the factors that shape teachers' competence in developing learners' information literacy by exploring contextual factors such as the availability of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and internal factors such as their attitudes. This study aims to shift the focus from exploring contextual factors or teachers' attitudes to exploring instructors' individual ICT-related factors. Through a bi-phenomenon analysis, this study leveraged teachers' professional knowledge and ICT-related teaching skills in shaping their competence to develop learners' information literacy. To do so, 346 university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lecturers in Iran voluntarily participated and answered the study instruments. The result of the partial least square modeling approach (PLS-SEM) revealed that lectures' skills in designing the procedure to develop university language learners' information literacy and integrating psychological factors, such as self-regulation and attitude, as well as the skills to implement the procedure and handle unforeseen challenges effectively cultivate information literacy. The professional knowledge areas of planning, exertion, and ethics were also recognized as preconditioning factors in this manner. In addition to introducing a new conceptual framework to the literature, the findings of this study also make recommendations on how lecturers can upgrade their action-oriented skills and professional knowledge to increase learners' information literacy. Executive managers should also update their recruitment criteria and evaluate lecturers' skills and knowledge during recruitment.

Formal teacher leader programs that develop, position, and reward teachers to work with peers to improve instruction are a growing reform effort in the United States, yet there are few published studies of their efficacy. In this paper, we examine the impacts of one district's teacher leadership program on students' annual state test performance. The program placed full-time instructional coaches and partly released English language arts (ELA) and mathematics content specialists in each of 11 district schools. To assess the program's impact, we examined five years of student-level state test data; two years before the adoption of the intervention and three years afterwards. Using an interrupted time series design, we examined trends in performance before and after the adoption of the intervention. Overall, there were no significant effects in ELA, and a small negative effect in mathematics. By contrast, in the stable sub-sample of students who were in the district for the five years examined in the study, there was a large significant positive effect in mathematics and large but non-significant positive effect in ELA. We conclude with a discussion the implications of these findings for research and policy.

Large-scale performance assessment programs are a longstanding reform tool. However, standard setting can be a challenge for assessment programs that use primarily non-standardized assessments. The purpose of this paper is to extend this field of research by explaining the standard setting methodology applied to one more recent instantiation of a state performance assessment program. The second purpose of this paper is to discuss the data quality control and quality assurance challenges experienced after five years of applying the standard setting method. Recognizing the burgeoning interest again in large-scale performance assessment programs, the goal and intended contribution of this paper is to inform future decisions about selecting appropriate standard setting methods and dealing with unanticipated challenges that may arise during implementation based upon the lessons learned from one program. It is likely that other large-scale performance assessment programs may face similar operational challenges, especially those that do not rely on standardized tests or standardized administration procedures to produce annual determinations of student proficiency or other scores used for accountability purposes. Assessment system designers can use the insights in this paper to consider standard setting methods and how those methods may need to be adapted to promote technical quality.