This book is a written account of a qualitative, narrative-based critical autoethnography exploring the development of leadership identities of women leaders, including the author, working in various educational settings, including K-12 schools, universities, politics, research centers, and community non-profit organizations.The author layers key findings from these participant stories with her own experiences, as well as with dominant US cultural ideologies about leadership, to ca...

Taking a critical, research-oriented perspective, this exploration of the theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical connections between the reading and teaching of young adult literature and adolescent identity development centers around three key questions:Who are the teens reading young adult literature?Why should teachers teach young adult literature?Why are teens reading young adult literature?All chapters wor...

Taking a close look at the forces that affect English education in schools—at the ways literature, cognitive science, the privileging of the STEM disciplines, and current educational policies are connected—this timely book counters with a strong argument for the importance of continuing to teach literature in middle and secondary classrooms. The case is made through critical examination of the ongoing "culture wars" between the humanities and the sciences, recent research in cognitive lite...

Over ten years after the original edition of Teacher Identity Discourses, Janet Alsup revisits her work with a new research study examining the characteristics of the millennial teachers now beginning to populate K-12 classrooms. Building off the first edition, this text is based on a qualitative, interview-based research study, and provides a contemporary look at how millennial teachers experience professional identity growth through language use. This innovative research investi...

This definitive look at teaching English in rural secondary schools contests current definitions and discussions of rural education, examines their ideological and cultural foundations, and presents an alternative perspective that conceptualizes rural communities as diverse, unique, and conducive to pedagogical and personal growth in teaching and learning. Authentic narratives document individual teachers’ moments of struggle and success in learning to understand, value, and incorporate ru...

First Opinions, Second Reactions: A Collection of Innovative Online Reviews of Literature for Children and Young Adults features selected pieces from the journal First Opinions, Second Reactions, which reviews children’s and young adult books. The journal, and this book, consist of reviews of books written by scholars of children’s and YA literature, followed up with responses from those who share the books with their intended audiences—children and teens. The editors hav...

This popular text articulates a powerful theory of critical literacy—in all its complexity. Critical literacy practices encourage students to use language to question the everyday world, interrogate the relationship between language and power, analyze popular culture and media, understand how power relationships are socially constructed, and consider actions that can be taken to promote social justice. By providing both a model for critical literacy instruction and many examples of how cri...

With the aim of discussing “old” and “new” teaching technologies, based on research and on the strategies and praxis of the use of technologies and methodologies in the different teaching levels, and also embracing the contribution and active participation of researchers, teachers, creators, managers and other specialists, the work will provide inputs on the following topics: Students’ perspectives on media in the classroom, Students and media (as content and as tools for learning), Educat...

This collection highlights the diverse ways comics and graphic novels are used in English and literature classrooms, whether to develop critical thinking or writing skills, paired with a more traditional text, or as literature in their own right. From fictional stories to non-fiction works such as biography/memoir, history, or critical textbooks, graphic narratives provide students a new way to look at the course material and the world around them. Graphic novels have been widely and succe...

Demonstrating the power of teaching global literature from a critical literacy perspective, this book explores the ways that K-6 educators can infuse diverse texts into their classrooms and find support for their endeavours in teacher inquiry communities. Through carefully analyzed, ethnographically informed portraits of classroom life alternating with teachers’ own accounts of their teaching and learning experiences, it demonstrates how students are moved to question, debate, and take act...

In this book we outline an optimistic, aspirational and unashamedly ambitious agenda for schooling. We make cautious use of the concept of ‘future proofing’ to signal the commitment of the various authors to re-thinking the purposes, content and processes of schooling with a view to ensuring that all children, from all backgrounds are prepared by their education to make a positive contribution to the futures that are ahead of them. The book focuses on issues relating to technology and soci...

This examination of the literary effectiveness of young adult literature from a critical, research-oriented perspective answers two key questions asked by many teachers and scholars in the field: Does young adult literature stand up on its own as literature? Is it worthy of close study?The treatment is both conceptual and pragmatic. Each chapter discusses a topical text set of YA novels in a conceptual framework—how these novels contribute to or deconstruct conventional wisdom abou...