AbstractThe article explores the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation, reading amount and the comprehension of narrative and expository texts in lower secondary school students. In addition, we intended to verify the effect on these variables of an educational programme, the writing and reading workshop (WRW), aimed at promoting students' love of reading and useful reading strategies. The sample included 149 children attending the first year of lower secondary school. A longitudinal design with two steps of data collection was used. In five classes, teachers applied the WRW; the same number of classes were enrolled as a control group and the teachers applied the Italian traditional teaching programme. The experimental group achieved better results in narrative text comprehension and in reading amount after 1 year. Reading amount was found to mediate the relationship between the instructional method and reading comprehension. No effects of the teaching method were found on either intrinsic or extrinsic motivation.

AbstractAs writers are increasingly required to leave their ways of knowing, doing and being at the doors of their classrooms, this article explores what happens when teachers of writers open those doors and mobilize the Writing Realities framework's interrelated principles of writer‐identity, critical literacies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, multiliteracies, translanguaging and intertextuality. With examples from place‐writing and place‐walking experiences with educators in a Summer Writing Institute, we show the possibilities and potential for multiple and diverse writing realities and relationalities. The article explores how writing relationalities moves outward from those moments to (re)energize teachers to (re)engage in the pressing work of challenging the issues of equity and power in classrooms, and to know/be/teach writers/writing differently.

AbstractAsset‐based and relational pedagogies highlight the centrality of meaningful relationships and authenticity in teaching and learning. Foregrounding children's lived experiences, interests, and ways of knowing provides a focus for teachers to be responsive, both relationally and pedagogically. Writing workshop, as conceived in the 1980's by Donald Graves and Lucy Calkins, is a longstanding curricular structure that encourages young writers to engage with multiple tools and resources, including peers, as they compose. Through writing conferences and authors’ chairs, young writers attend to the practice of composing on paper/screen as well as how their message may be received. This study analyzes children's writing samples to underscore the presence of (a) writing identity, (b) critical literacy, (c) culturally sustaining pedagogy, (d) translanguaging, and (e) intertextuality. Chilldren's interactions with tools, peers, and others provide fertile ground for understanding the critical role of a humanizing and relational approach to teaching and learning. The following questions guide this study: (1) How is a writing realities framework reflected in young children's compositions? (2) What do children's writing artifacts reveal about relationality?

AbstractUnderpinning this consideration of writing instruction in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) is the premise that acts of teaching interact with the context in which they occur; they are shaped by the socio‐cultural milieu, philosophical and socio‐political traditions, curriculum and assessment systems, and the nature of individual classrooms. This perspective positions research regarding effective teaching and learning as requiring interpretation and, often, adaptation. Further, we have argued elsewhere that shared theories or understandings about constructs in writing instruction, applied within a context, can give rise to varied acts of instruction. Two constructs in writing instruction, key given features of the NZ context, are examined: developing independent, self‐regulating writers, and engaging in responsive, sustaining pedagogy. In NZ, shared theory of the importance of developing independent, self‐regulating writers is actioned in multiple pedagogical acts or approaches: teaching of strategies, largely through modelling; scaffolding goal setting; providing opportunities for decision making and choice; and enabling peer and self‐evaluation. Promoting self‐regulation is important given a policy of continuous intake, and traditions of non‐streamed classrooms and of teaching the individual. Shared understandings about responsiveness include knowing each individual student and building on, and sustaining, existing strengths. In teaching, writing this includes differentiating instruction often through the use of small‐group instruction, providing targeted, accessible feedback, and the use of culturally sustaining forms of instruction such as those involving trans‐languaging and storytelling. These understandings align with shared views of teaching as iterative inquiry and with official invitations to adapt curricula to fit local contexts.

AbstractThis article examines the impact of a poet‐led classroom‐based poetry programme on secondary school students' writer identities and self‐expression, particularly focusing on BPoC teenagers. Drawing on the Writing Realities framework, the research uses focus groups, participant observations, and interviews with the poet‐in‐residence. Rather than analysing the students' poems, the study explores their engagement with poetry writing and the poet‐in‐residence, highlighting the contribution to self‐reflection and meaning‐making. The findings reveal how the residency introduced students to diverse poetry forms, community‐based poetry, and collaborative writing, facilitating critical engagement with themes relevant to their lives. However, the school's status as a Predominantly White Institution hindered full expression of BPoC students' identities. The presence of the poet‐in‐residence, a young mixed‐heritage Muslim woman, positively influenced students' relationships with writing, particularly for BPoC students, by providing a protected space for self‐expression and identity exploration. The study underscores the importance of creating supportive environments in schools to nurture BPoC students' creativity and writer identity, emphasising the need for anti‐racist practices and culturally sustaining pedagogies to empower students from socially marginalised groups.

No abstract is available for this article.

AbstractThis study investigates the use of metacognitive strategies by young emergent multilingual students in a translanguaging pedagogy scenario. From a multilingual perspective, we understand metacognition as a broader concept that refers to the learning or thinking processes that encapsulate metalinguistic and crosslinguistic awareness. We focus on the performance phase of the reading process where students deploy strategies and monitor the progress and quality of the activity. The participants were 48 bilingual fifth graders in a multilingual school in the Basque Autonomous Community in the north of Spain; 39.5% of the students had Basque as their first language, while 60.5% had Spanish, similar to the sociolinguistic context of the school, and all were learning English as a foreign language. Data for this study were collected in the English class while the students were set in pairs to complete a reading comprehension task. Their performance was audio‐recorded, and language‐related episodes were analysed to explore the strategic behaviour of the students. This analysis identified episodes where students talked about either their language production or language use. The findings show that although pedagogical translanguaging focuses mainly on raising crosslinguistic awareness, it can also develop a broader metalinguistic awareness and facilitate metacognitive reflection. The study highlights the link between enhancing metalinguistic awareness and the development of multilingual students' metacognitive knowledge for effective self‐regulated strategic behaviour when reading in a foreign language.