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Reading identities are the ways that a child constructs the self as a reader across contexts and time. This study examines the impact of language contexts on the reading identities of multilingual children. Participants were ten prekindergarten children participating in a Chinese-English family literacy programme with a parent or grandparent. Participants read Chinese and English language books across English, Chinese and multilingual contexts. Children's reading identities were examined across language contexts to explore the interplay between language contexts and reading identities. Findings describe convergences and differences in reading identities across contexts for Chinese, English and multilingual language use and Chinese and English texts, and provide insights into the ways that different language contexts for reading affect multilingual children's early reading identities. Multilingual contexts appear to provide key spaces for the development of reading identities, and English and Chinese contexts contribute to unique aspects of children's reading identities.

Many approaches to reading that are common in schools focus narrowly on the skills and strategies that comprise the technical ability to read. In contrast, attention to reading identities prompts teachers to center children's ideas about what reading is and who they are as readers. In this article, the author draws on his own experiences with children in prekindergarten to examine the various aspects of children that together make them a reader, including how children conceptualize, perform, and experience reading, and how they connect reading to understandings of language and other aspects of their identities. The author describes approaches to learn about and assess children's reading identities that are based on his work in a prekindergarten classroom. These include intentional talk about reading, drawing about reading, observation during play and classroom activities, and family questionnaires. The author then provides guidance on how these assessments can inform classroom practices, and how teachers can account for the role of identities as they plan instruction for and support early reading.

Reading identities, or the ways that a child constructs the self as a reader across contexts and time, play a role in the development of early reading. Prior research on reading identities has reported primarily on the identities of monolingual children. This multiple case study examines the reading identities of young multilingual children. Participants were 10 four- and five-year-old multilingual children from two prekindergarten classrooms in the United States: one monolingual English classroom and one classroom where English and Spanish were used for instruction. Data were gathered using child-centered interviews, child and classroom observations, teacher interviews, and a family questionnaire. A cross-case analysis led to the identification of three aspects of early reading identities connected to multilingualism. These show the ways that young multilingual children construct concepts of the self as reader that are responsive to the experience of being multilingual.

The shift to emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a need to develop technologies, resources, and strategies for teaching elementary grade learners online. This study uses online teacher inquiry as a form of practice-based knowledge production to identify and develop instructional practices and support structures for online teaching in grades PK-5. Six teachers of PK-5 classrooms in the United States participated in a teacher inquiry program as they transitioned from in-person to online teaching. Findings provide guidance to assist teachers and administrators in designing teaching and structures that support online learning in the elementary grades.

The language practices used by teachers in schools directly impact the language development and reading performance of multilingual children. Despite the important effect of teacher language choices on children's language learning, there is a considerable need to better understand what constitutes effective multilingual language practices for teachers. This study uses teacher inquiry to examine the language practices multilingual early childhood teachers develop, implement, and refine when supported to critically examine their teaching practice. Participants were five multilingual early childhood teachers with varying language histories, program settings, and professional experiences. Findings describe themes that capture the key practices and guiding ideas from the knowledge developed by these teachers. These themes provide guidance on practices that can leverage the language capacities of multilingual teachers and show ways that multilingual teachers can make language choices that support multilingual learners. This study centers multilingual teachers' voices and knowledge about language and culture, and highlights the critical role of teachers as producers of new knowledge and language practices.

Online learning presents the possibility to connect and sustain communities of multilingual early childhood educators. This study reports on the effectiveness of an online teacher inquiry model to support early childhood educators' learning on the role of multilingualism in teaching. The Community of Inquiry framework is used to evaluate the efficacy of a teacher inquiry program that was offered through a synchronous, online platform. Results show that online teacher inquiry models can be used to provide accessible and effective spaces for professional learning and growth, and can center multilingual educators' ways of knowing and being about language, culture, and learning.

Reading identities are the ways that a person constructs the self as a reader across contexts and time. This study explores reading identities as a developmental process in multilingual children in prekindergarten and kindergarten. Participants were six children ages three to four participating in a Chinese-English family literacy program over a two year period. Children's reading identities were examined across years and across children to describe areas of development in how children expressed reading identities. Findings describe areas of growth and stability in the reading development of young children that includes their first years of formal schooling.

This study examines the relationship between early reading identities and social status in school contexts. Reading identities, or the ways that a child constructs the self as a reader across contexts and time, have been posited to be closely linked with social status. This single-case study examines the reading identities and social status of one 4-year-old, multilingual child attending prekindergarten in a public school in a large northeastern U.S. city. Data include child-centered interviews, naturalistic observations, a teacher interview, and a family questionnaire. Findings provide insights into how one child's ability to gain recognition of his reading identities was context dependent and distinct from his social status in the classroom, and point to more complexity in how the early reading identities of multilingual children are connected to their social contexts.

Artificial intelligence is the simulation or development of reasoning and other human‐like cognitive abilities by computers. Currently, there is limited exploration of applications of artificial intelligence tools for teaching reading to children in the early childhood and elementary grades, including how artificial intelligence might be used to personalize reading materials for children. This article draws on teachers' experiences with artificial intelligence tools to provide tips on how to use artificial intelligence to create differentiated reading materials for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to report on the decisions two teachers made about how to engage with a five-year school-university collaboration that used professional development (PD) to foster changes in language instruction for teachers of multilingual learners. Design/methodology/approach: A longitudinal case study was used to examine the experiences of two teachers to provide insights into classroom-level decisions and changes in instructional practices. Findings: Changes in instructional practices occurred when teachers made active, engaged choices about their own learning and teaching in the classroom. Teacher learning did not follow a consistent trajectory of improvement and contained contradictions, and early decisions about how to engage with PD affected the pace and nature of teacher learning. Through personal decisions about how to engage with PD, teachers adopted new instructional practices to support multilingual learners. Positive changes required extended time for teachers to implement new practices successfully. Practical implications: This collaboration points to a need for long-term PD partnerships that value teacher agency to produce instructional changes that support multilingual learners. Originality/value: PD can play a key role in transforming literacy instruction for multilingual learners. Teacher agency, including the decisions teachers make about how to engage with professional learning opportunities and how to enact new instructional practices in the classroom, mediates the efficacy of PD initiatives. This longitudinal case study contributes to the understanding of effective PD by presenting two contrasting case studies of teacher agency and learning during long-term school-university collaboration.

People with multiple sclerosis (MS) must often cope with high levels of stress, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Brief-COPE is commonly used to assess how individuals use different coping strategies to deal with stressful life situations, but its application with people who have MS has not been validated. The purpose of this study was to assess the measurement structure and psychometric properties of the Brief-COPE in a sample of community-dwelling adults with multiple sclerosis, using exploratory factor analysis. Results revealed a three-factor measurement structure: (a) flexible coping, (b) succumbing coping, and (c) substance use coping. Correlations among these three factors and external measures of related concepts provided evidence of the validity of these factors. The Brief-COPE can be incorporated in rehabilitation counseling, mental health, and health care settings to assess coping strategies, assisting people with MS with managing stressful life events during and after the pandemic. Rehabilitation and health researchers can use it to assess the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions aimed to improve coping abilities and mental health of people with MS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of identity has been used to interrogate a wide range of topics about children's learning in the content areas, including learning in literacy, math, and science. Despite this, there is a paucity of attention to how the construct of identities is conceptualized across content areas. This systematic integrative review aims to develop an empirically grounded view of how identities are conceptualized in childhood across content areas and to consider the feasibility of a shared conception of content area identities. To do this, the review examines 66 articles on content area identities in early childhood and childhood (birth through Grade 5). Findings show diverse theories are used to examine content area identities in children and at the same time significant consensus in the underlying assumptions about what content area identities are and how they develop. These findings suggest that researchers move away from the current siloed approach to content area identity research and toward a more connected field of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the interplay between early reading, identity and bilingualism. Reading identities, or understandings about what reading is and whom one is as a reader, have been linked to reading achievement and the development of reading skills. Only a small portion of the overall research on reading identities has included dual language learners. This exploratory study provides a description of the reading identities of three dual language learners in prekindergarten. Data include child-centered interviews, child and classroom observations, teacher interviews and a family questionnaire. Methods centered on the use of child-oriented data collection protocols, and the inclusion of children in the interpretation of their own work and language. Through the exploration of three cases, this study documents the ways that reading identities were constructed, taken up and expressed by the participants. This study provides evidence that dual language learners are actively constructing ideas about reading, bilingualism/biliteracy, and whom they are as readers as they learn to read. These findings show that framing early reading in an identity perspective presents opportunities to look more holistically at the language and reading practices of dual language learners as they learn to read and navigate two or more languages at home and school.

Education researchers have extensively studied classroom discourse as a way to understand classroom structures and learning. This article proposes the use of social network analysis (SNA) as a method for discourse studies in education. SNA enables us to learn about the connections between persons and the patterns of relations within groups. This presents a novel approach to the study of discourse that may more accurately reflect current understandings of discourse as a social phenomenon. This article explains the theoretical links between SNA and the concept of discourse in education and then considers how SNA can be used to examine classroom discourse. A brief overview of promising methods is presented to provide examples of how SNA can be applied to discourse data. This article argues that continued exploration and applications of SNA could yield more complex understandings of the role of discourse in learning opportunities and outcomes.

This article documents a collaboration between a second-grade teacher and a university-based literacy coach to implement dialogic instruction as part of a 14-week cross-disciplinary curriculum unit. The coach-teacher dyad used digital technologies to enhance a problem-solving approach to coaching. The authors describe the coaching interactions, the digital tools used (e.g., e-mail, FaceTime, text messaging, video and audio recordings), the problems that the coach-teacher dyad collaboratively addressed over three phases of the unit, and the student learning that occurred in response. Throughout, the authors highlight how the coach and teacher made flexible use of digital technology to carve out additional time and space for problem solving as they worked to support the language and literacy skills of a group of multilingual second-grade students.

Although young dual language students (DLLs) learn to write and use language expressively in ways that differ from monolingual English speakers, these differences are rarely addressed in curricula and instruction. In particular, despite a recent shift in attention to how identities shape literacy practices and motivations, common frameworks for understanding identity have been used only in a limited way with regard to young children and DLLs. This article reports relevant theory and research on the writing identities of young DLLs that informed an elementary-level instructional framework that supports the language acquisition and writing development of DLLs, including positive self-identification with writing.