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There is a need to better understand the complex landscape of adolescent literacy intervention as a shared responsibility across all educational stakeholders. To address this need, we examined the self-reported literacy beliefs and practices about secondary readers and literacy intervention among a group of educators (including administrators, teachers, and specialists) who participated in a year-long professional learning series focused on providing adolescents with rich and responsive literacy learning opportunities. We found that educators' beliefs and practices shifted as they developed shared understandings of asset-based mindsets and ways of supporting students' situated literacy learning and comprehension within disciplinary contexts. We offer suggestions for how to create shared learning opportunities for educators across roles and discuss implications for future research.

Stand-alone reading intervention courses, or reading classes, are designed to facilitate the literacy development of adolescents who have been deemed "struggling" readers. However, the existence of such courses does not mean that these goals are realized. Decades of qualitative research on youth perspectives and experiences have documented how inequity can persist within reading classes. Nevertheless, district mandates or curricular adoptions often require schools to offer these courses. To mitigate students' negative experiences when these courses are offered, Maneka Deanna Brooks, Katherine K. Frankel, and Julie E. Learned draw on their research to propose a four-phase process to evaluate and revise policies and practices for placing students in reading classes.

While educators may be well positioned to support unaccompanied immigrant youth, there is limited interdisciplinary research focused on understanding the complexity of youth's experiences in US schools. The purpose of this qualitative, interview-based study was to better understand how youth's transnational experiences pre-, during, and post-migration affected their school-based experiences, and to explore how schools supported them. Participants included ten unaccompanied immigrant youths from Central America and six key informants who worked with youth in a professional capacity. Findings indicate that youth experienced multiple challenges including stressful and traumatic events, barriers to mental health and legal services, and unfamiliar cultural and linguistic norms that sometimes were not recognized or understood by their teachers and schools. The youth also brought important resources, such as high expectations and aspirations and strong connections to family and community. School-based experiences that built from youth's resources and motivations (e.g., through school-community partnerships and responsive classroom practices) had the potential to enhance belonging, community connections, and wellness. More interdisciplinary research is needed to develop and support school-based practices and partnerships in consultation with youth that build from knowledge of their particular resources and challenges.

Prior research on peer literacy teaching tends to be conceptualized as peer tutoring and often focuses on the cognitive aspects of reading (e.g., skills, strategies). In this multiple case study, we draw on theories of identity and positioning to propose a conceptual shift from "tutoring" to "mentoring" to also describe the affective and relational dimensions of peer literacy teaching. In our analysis, we explore how two 11th graders positioned themselves as readers and mentors in a cross-age literacy mentorship class in a public high school in the northeastern United States. Data sources include mentor interviews, field notes, and artifacts. Our multiphase coding process identified three main themes: the importance of (a) texts and (b) relationships and reciprocity to mentors' positioning, and (c) complexities of the mentor position. Findings suggest that school-based opportunities for youth to work collaboratively to understand their own and others' reading processes may contribute insights into both the affective and the cognitive aspects of peer literacy teaching.

Background/Context: In the past two decades there have been at least 10 quantitative reviews, syntheses, or meta-analyses focused on literacy interventions in secondary schools. To date, much of this research has focused on quantifiable outcomes such as reading test scores, and few efforts have been made to synthesize studies of adolescent literacy interventions that attend to how students themselves experience those interventions and what mediates their experiences, which previous adolescent literacy research suggests should be considered alongside other outcomes. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This meta-synthesis of qualitative research highlights additional factors that are overlooked when evidence of effectiveness is defined predominantly through assessment outcomes. It contributes insights from two decades of research on reading intervention classes (RICs), which are a long-standing approach to adolescent literacy intervention. We define RICs as compulsory, yearlong courses that supplement content-area classes with the goal of improving adolescents' reading. Grounded in sociocultural theories of literacy and learning, our research question was: How do students experience and perceive RICs? Research Design: We conducted a qualitative meta-synthesis of 21 studies published between 2000 and 2020 that (1) focused on secondary (grades 6-12) RICs in the United States and (2) included data related to students' experiences and perspectives. Data Collection and Analysis: We followed best practices in qualitative meta-synthesis, including assembling an author team composed of researchers with expertise in RICs, identifying a research meta-question, conducting a comprehensive search, selecting and appraising relevant studies, and coding and presenting findings using qualitative techniques. Findings/Results: We found that youth's own diverse understandings of themselves as readers and writers, combined with the extent to which they viewed their RICs as relevant, agentive, and facilitative of relationships, mediated students' experiences and perceptions of their RICs. In addition, students across studies described placement policies and practices as confusing, frustrating, and embarrassing. Conclusions/Recommendations: By providing a perspective that extends beyond test scores, the findings highlight some of the consequences of intervention placement policies and practices for adolescents. They also address the need for educational stakeholders to expand definitions of what counts as evidence of effectiveness to inform the future development of re-mediated literacy learning opportunities for adolescents that (1) rethink curriculum and instruction to affirm students' literacy identities, histories, and capacities, and (2) reposition youth as literacy knowers and doers.

Despite evidence that youths' literacy practices and identities are important contributors to literacy learning, studies of secondary literacy instruction often focus on understanding classroom storylines from the perspectives of teachers and schools. The purpose of this case study was to examine how one youth, Leo, shaped the storyline of his one-on-one literacy tutorials by attending to his deviations from his tutor's storyline. Framed by theories of identity, agency, and positioning, findings indicate that deviations were acts of agency that manifested as collaborative authoring or improvisation and provided insights about Leo as a reader, writer, and person. Findings highlight the situated and collaborative nature of meaning-making and the importance of theoretically grounded literacy instruction that attends to how students negotiate their positions in relation to teachers' storylines.

Secondary literacy instruction often happens "to" adolescents rather than "with" them. To disrupt this trend, we collaborated with 12th-grade "literacy mentors" to reimagine literacy teaching and learning with 10th-grade mentees in a public high school classroom. We used positioning theory as an analytic tool to (a) understand how mentors positioned themselves and how we positioned them and (b) examine the literacy practices that enabled and constrained the mentor position. We found that our positioning of mentors as collaborators was taken up in different and sometimes unexpected ways as a result of the multiple positions available to them and institutional-level factors that shaped what literacy practices were and were not negotiable. We argue that future collaborations with youth must account for the rights and duties of all members of a classroom community, including how those rights and duties intersect, merge, or come into conflict within and across practices.

Most schools operate as hierarchical structures, where adult stakeholders largely dictate what counts as knowledge and how to teach it. While previous scholarship has documented the promise of youth-led initiatives to trouble hierarchical structures, these explorations tend to occur outside of schools and do not typically account for the kinds of changes in relations between youth and adults necessary to disrupt hierarchical structures from within. Using third-generation cultural-historical activity theory as our theoretical framework, in this study we explore the shifts in subject-subject relations that emerged as high school youth literacy mentors, their teacher, and university researchers participated in iterative processes of co-configuration to open up new possibilities for literacy learning at their public school. We examine how youth mentors and adults co-designed and co-taught the Literacy Mentorship Class (LMC) while increasingly engaging contradictions as double binds within the Literacy Mentorship Debrief (LMD). We trace how evolving subject-subject relations in the LMD contributed to shifts in divisions of labor, rules, objects, and mediating artifacts in and beyond the LMC. Ultimately, we propose debriefs as a set of reflective practices to facilitate future possibilities for co-configuration among youth and adults that can be responsive to the particularities of any school community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate teacher-initiated whole-group oral reading practices in two ninth-grade reading intervention classrooms and how teachers understood the purposes of those practices. Design/methodology/approach: In this qualitative cross-case analysis, a literacy-as-social-practice perspective is used to collaboratively analyze ethnographic data (fieldnotes, audio recordings, interviews, artifacts) across two classrooms. Findings: Oral reading was a routine instructional reading event in both classrooms. However, the literacy practices that characterized oral reading and teachers' purposes for using oral reading varied depending on teachers' pedagogical philosophies, instructional goals and contextual constraints. During oral reading, students' opportunities to engage in independent meaning making with texts were either absent or secondary to other purposes or goals. Practical implications: Findings emphasize the significance of understanding both how and why oral reading happens in secondary classrooms. Specifically, they point to the importance of collaborating with teachers to: (1) examine their own ideas about the power of oral reading and the institutional factors that shape their existing oral reading practices; (2) investigate the intended and actual outcomes of oral reading for their students; and (3) develop other instructional approaches to support students to individually and collaboratively make meaning from texts. Originality/value: This study falls at the intersection of three under-researched areas of study: the nature of everyday instruction in secondary literacy intervention settings, the persistence of oral reading in secondary school and teachers' purposes for using oral reading in their instruction. Consequently, it contributes new knowledge that can support educators in creating more equitable instructional environments.

Studies of high school literacy intervention classes have measured reading gains through standardized assessments, but few have considered the impact on students' identities. In this embedded case study, I used theories of identity and positioning to answer two research questions: How did institutional and interpersonal acts of positioning in two literacy intervention classrooms build on, change, or challenge students' personal histories and identities as readers? How did these acts shape students' understandings of themselves as readers over time? I collected and analyzed interviews, field notes, and artifacts. Analyses revealed that ongoing positioning in one classroom thickened one student's identity as a poor reader. Positioning in the second classroom reinforced the other student's identity as a good student but had little impact on her identity as a reader. These findings highlight the need to better understand how instructional contexts privilege particular ways of reading and understandings of what it means to be a reader.

In their 1985 report, "Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading," Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson defined reading and proposed five principles that guide its successful enactment: (1) reading is a constructive process, (2) reading must be fluent, (3) reading must be strategic, (4) reading requires motivation, and (5) reading is a continuously developing skill. In this article we revise the definition from "reading" to "literacy" and rethink the principles in response to theoretical and empirical developments in the intervening years with regard to the processes of, and contexts for, reading. Our updated principles include: (1) literacy is a constructive, integrative, and critical process situated in social practices; (2) fluent reading is shaped by language processes and contexts; (3) literacy is strategic and disciplinary; (4) literacy entails motivation and engagement; and (5) literacy is a continuously developing set of practices. We redefine each principle and offer new explanations in light of what we now know.

Theories guide many aspects of literacy research. In this article we describe four theoretical approaches that we have used in qualitative research with students who are perceived to struggle with reading in school, including: New Literacy Studies, Disability Studies in Education, Bioecological Systems Theory, and Cultural Historical Activity Theory. We provide a brief overview of each of the theories and then explain how we have used them to gain insights about students with whom we have worked in the context of our research. Although grounded in distinct perspectives, we argue that each of the theories are lenses through which we were better able to understand the complexities of students' struggles with reading. We further argue that the theories are united in their ability to broaden the perspectives of researchers and teachers to better account for the social, cultural, and institutional factors that shape literacy teaching and learning in schools. We conclude by questioning the use of the term "struggling reader" and highlighting the implications of our individual theoretical frames and analyses for both research and practice.

In this joint reflection two of the contributors to this issue of the "Journal of Education" consider the processes and practices that led to the publication of their respective pieces. Since one of the authors, Katherine Frankel, was a doctoral advisee of the other, David Pearson, they also reflect on the mentoring practices they shared over the last five years as Katherine completed her doctorate at Berkeley.

At the end of the twentieth century, genre theorists and practitioners debated the possibility of explicitly teaching genres in classrooms. Though the debate is decades old, it continues to be relevant to contemporary discussions about literacy instruction because it addresses questions about how to provide all students with access to genres of power. In this article, I highlight one example of explicit genre instruction in Australia that is particularly noteworthy for its critical and dialogic aspects, and then make connections between this approach and similar theoretical and pedagogical work in the United States. I conclude with a discussion of some of the implications for pedagogy that are derived from my analysis.

The discourse of literary analysis is dynamic and ideological, shifting as writers navigate conventions and practices to meet their rhetorical purposes in particular contexts. While scholars have engaged ideological analyses of students learning to write literary analysis essays in university contexts, few studies have documented student writers' experiences of disciplinary enculturation in secondary English language arts classrooms. In this case study, we address this absence by using the concept of stance to examine how the identity of one student--Katarina--informed her interactions with the discourse of literary analysis as it was understood and instantiated by her teacher. In our analysis of essay drafts, field notes, artifacts, and interview transcripts, we found that the convergence of Katarina's identity as a creative and emotional person and writer with the possibilities for selfhood afforded to her in this context contributed to her stance toward the discourse. We examine points of tension across two of Katarina's essays that illuminate her ideological struggles as she navigated the discourse of her classroom. Our findings point to the utility of stance as a conceptual tool for researchers and educators to take a critical perspective on students' writing processes in the context of the ideologically laden, authoritative demands of secondary classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt "struggling reader" and "struggling writer" labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt "struggling reader" and "struggling writer" labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt "struggling reader" and "struggling writer" labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt "struggling reader" and "struggling writer" labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt "struggling reader" and "struggling writer" labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt "struggling reader" and "struggling writer" labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt "struggling reader" and "struggling writer" labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt "struggling reader" and "struggling writer" labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]