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The researchers in this qualitative case study explored the dialogic experiences of elementary school students during Comic Book Club meetings held in their local community resource center. The researchers wanted to know what experiences of dialogism were manifested in children's conversations about reading, writing, and comic creation and what concepts of dialogism were evident in those experiences. The interview and observation data and artifacts suggest that co-construction of meaning and intertextuality played important roles in the dialogic experiences of the participants. Children's co-construction of meaning and intertextuality also demonstrated engaged embodiment due to children's spontaneous enactment of dance and dramatization in the Comic Book Club sessions. The authors believe that the creation of an open ontological dialogic space enabled this liberatory embodiment of children's mental and physical capacities. They recommend that educators and researchers work to create dialogic spaces in schools and community centers to counter the numbing effects of antidialogic pedagogies that are prevalent in schools.

In this research, literacy scholars present the voices of the people who live in the parks near their state capital and university in a south-eastern city in the United States. Through the recorded, transcribed and analyzed conversations, we report the literacy practices of the people in the parks and their insights into the nested state and university structures that restrict and empower their quality of life opportunities. The general findings show our participants to be avid readers of a variety of genres and users of technology but with limited access to state and university resources and infrastructures due to laws and regulations and community members' negative perceptions that restrict their use. Recommendations are made for more urban community state and university collaborative initiatives to increase understandings and respect for people who live in the parks to honor their motivations for greater social capital and attainment of their life goals.

In response to becoming a more multicultural society, the South Korean Ministry of Education has implemented a multicultural education policy since 2006 by promoting English as key for young learners' communicative competence in a global world. Despite numerous previous studies on government-led curriculum and textbooks for English as a foreign language (EFL) across many countries, little attention has been given to the cultural and linguistic aspects of primary-level EFL textbooks. Within the framework of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), this study investigated multicultural understandings, social values, and beliefs embedded in the reading passages of five Korean Grade 6 EFL textbooks. By employing multimodal content analysis, it also scrutinized what messages and meanings are constructed with semiotic devices and the extent of the textbooks to foster EFL students' ICC. Findings revealed that the textbooks (re)produce national pride and otherness and promote the idea of English for a White global world. The lack of interactive communication events in diverse settings was also found problematic in developing students' new identities as global citizens. The study argues for critical approaches to multicultural education and intercultural development in EFL education by reconceptualizing English as a mediator for developing intercultural contact with diverse others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Queer is an inclusive term that embraces Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+), among other sexual identities. Thinking queer examines how fixed meanings or knowledge, or a particular image or identity, can be challenged, unfixed, unlearned, inquired, and placed into new learnings and understandings. In this paper, we think queer together with terms, images, and dialogs in Vietnamese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks. We adapted the Critical Visual Discourse Analysis (CVDA) and methods of critique to guide our thinking with the two questions: 1) How are gender roles represented in Vietnamese EFL textbooks? and 2) Are there queer terms, images, dialogs represented in Vietnamese EFL textbooks? If so, how are they depicted? The findings revealed biases in gender roles and invisibility of queer representations. We conclude by offering pedagogical implications for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines four adolescent multilinguals' engagement with religion, as well as outcomes of that engagement, in an out-of-school book club. The qualitative analysis of participants' talk in book club meetings, writing responses, and individual interviews revealed that multilinguals tap into their religious knowledge and identities in making sense of secular literature. Engaging with different religious identities in literature discussion inevitably led to conflicts and tensions, but the ways in which the multilinguals dealt with the conflicts varied. In spite of tensions, they gained academic and social competence as learners of English as an additional language (EAL). This investigation contributes to the scarce body of literature around the interconnectedness among religion, identity, and literacy. It also adds to the field by depicting interactions of EAL learners from diverse religious backgrounds, nonbelievers and believers in Hinduism and Islam.

In this article, the author describes her preparations for the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) professional presentations in Haiti. As a cultural worker, (after Paulo Freire), she was very conscious of the need for care in working with "the Other" especially when the Other is known only from second hand experiences and mainly through superficial lens. How presumptuous it would be on their first visit to assume the needs of the people they had never met. It would be better to become familiar with the needs and then decide upon the best course of action later. Similar to what she does in her TESOL practicum in working in the homes of unknown refugee families, she knows that it is important for an ethnographer to clarify his or her own thinking and purpose before venturing into unfamiliar territory. She wanted to be sure that she was not operating under a false assumption or deficit perspective. How was she to be in Haiti? What lens would dominate seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling? What does poverty really look like? From her readings she learned about the evils and corruptions of life in an impoverished state. Described herein are her preparations and her work during her time in Haiti. (Contains 1 table.)

In this research, literacy scholars present the voices of the people who live in the parks near their state capital and university in a south-eastern city in the United States. Through the recorded, transcribed and analyzed conversations, we report the literacy practices of the people in the parks and their insights into the nested state and university structures that restrict and empower their quality of life opportunities. The general findings show our participants to be avid readers of a variety of genres and users of technology but with limited access to state and university resources and infrastructures due to laws and regulations and community members' negative perceptions that restrict their use. Recommendations are made for more urban community state and university collaborative initiatives to increase understandings and respect for people who live in the parks to honor their motivations for greater social capital and attainment of their life goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]