High School English Language Arts Research Articles

‘Courageous and uncomfortable’: high school English language arts teachers using shared leadership qualities in virtual and hybrid classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Shared leadership research shows that it could be beneficial in the high school classroom. During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers were looking for best-practice strategies to move their curriculum online and to hybrid. This worldwide crisis provided a moment in time to rethink traditional education in unprecedented mandatory mass virtual and hybrid learning. For this study, data was collected using a three-interview approach on Zoom in conjunction with virtual observations of classrooms, teacher and student artifacts, and researcher reflections. The selected teachers reported that they worked to foster an environment of trust, interdependence, collaboration, and collectivism at the beginning of school year 2020 which allowed aspects of shared leadership and student voice to flourish, even within multiple, changing modalities. Students felt more confident to take safe risks in discussion and thinking because everyone was experiencing change, a shared collectivism. The participants found success using student voice consistently to help create engagement, creativity, and other shared leadership qualities in the classroom. All of the qualities were reciprocal, as trust increased, student voice also increased, and likewise for many of the other qualities. Because of this reciprocity, students were able to discuss and reflect knowledge in new ways that many times they directed. Teachers reported a sense of self-efficacy through students’ engagement in their course work and their willingness to take risks. Many times, the teachers felt like students themselves as they took risks and adapted to the changing requirements.

Reading Rhetorically: Discussing the Ethics of Narrative Form

In this study, we explore discussions of literature in a high school English Language Arts (ELA) classroom, examining how students read rhetorically. Reading rhetorically considers the ethical effects of narrative content as it is mediated through character dialogue and action, narrator discourse, and the author's organization: a narrative as a story told to someone for some rhetorical purpose. Drawing from rhetorical narratology, we analyzed data collected in a 12th-Grade ELA classroom during student-driven Socratic seminars to ask: how did students address the ethics of various narrative situations as they talked about literature? We found that youth engaged in interpretive discussions that grappled with the complexities of ethical positioning in narrative. We argue that ELA classrooms are key spaces to help students examine how narratives act on readers, how readers act on narratives, and the ethical dimensions of such interpretive work.

The multilingual poetry task: Innovating L2 writing pedagogy in the secondary classroom

This multiple case-study explores how a multilingual poetry task can be used to support multilingual writers in mainstream U.S. high school English language arts (ELA) classes. The purpose of the investigation is to closely examine the affordances of a multilingual poetry task and discuss its innovative pedagogical aspects in terms of the results that the task achieves—the learning it promotes—as well as highlight interdisciplinary collaboration between (English as a second language (ESL) and ELA teachers. I argue that the multilingual poetry task can innovate L2 writing pedagogy, address common problems that multilingual writers and their teachers face, and provide resident immigrant learners with affordances such as innovative developments in multilingual writing techniques, an understanding of compositional aspects of writing via open poetic forms, and an opportunity to explore humanistic aspects of language learning. A qualitative evidence-based approach is applied to analyze samples of multilingual poetry from two resident immigrant writers of diverse backgrounds (e.g., Belarus and Myanmar). This analysis is offset with learner immediate post-course and delayed interviews, learner reflective writing, and classroom observations and interactions. Finally, utilizing data from post-course ELA teacher interviews, the article discusses how interdisciplinary ELA-ESL teacher collaboration can better support emergent multilingual writers and move the field of second language writing forward.

Dialogic literary argumentation and close reading: effects on high school students' literature-related argumentative writing and motivational beliefs.

Given evidence that adolescent students' motivation to read and write about literature declines with age, we proffer an approach called dialogic literary argumentation (DLA) that asks students to explore literature through argumentation in pursuit of understanding the meanings and possibilities of being human. This quasi-experimental study compared the effectiveness of DLA with close reading (CR), a common approach to teaching literature in high school English language arts classrooms, in improving students' motivational beliefs about writing and literature-related argumentative writing. The study also examined how the links between motivational beliefs and argumentative writing performance varied by instructional contexts. Participants were 278 high school students in 14 classrooms across 8 public high schools. Classrooms of students received either DLA or CR throughout the academic year. While both the DLA and CR groups improved in literature-related argumentative writing, the DLA group demonstrated more growth than the CR group. Neither group exhibited changes in motivational beliefs. However, at the end of the year, both DLA and CR students' transactional writer beliefs were predictive of writing self-efficacy. Transmissional writer beliefs negatively correlated with argumentative writing in the CR group and had a null relationship in the DLA group. Overall, motivational beliefs and argumentative writing were more positively correlated in the DLA group than the CR group after the intervention. We posit that the argumentative elements unique to DLA may act to protect students from the negative impacts of transmissional beliefs. Our findings provide theoretical explanations and pedagogical recommendations on how DLA and CR can be jointly employed to heighten students' motivation and strengthen their argumentative writing competence.

Exploring Artificial Intelligence in English Language Arts with StoryQ

Exploring Artificial Intelligence (AI) in English Language Arts (ELA) with StoryQ is a 10-hour curriculum module designed for high school ELA classes. The module introduces students to fundamental AI concepts and essential machine learning workflow using StoryQ, a web-based GUI environment for Grades 6-12 learners. In this module, students work with unstructured text data and learn to train, test, and improve text classification models such as intent recognition, clickbait filter, and sentiment analysis. As they interact with machine-learning language models deeply, students also gain a nuanced understanding of language and how to wield it, not just as a data structure, but as a tool in our human-human encounters as well. The current version contains eight lessons, all delivered through a full-featured online learning and teaching platform. Computers and Internet access are required to implement the module. The module was piloted in an ELA class in the Spring of 2022, and the student learning outcomes were positive. The module is currently undergoing revision and will be further tested and improved in Fall 2022.

“Every day do something that won't compute”: Student perceptions of daily poetry practice

AbstractThis article considers high school students' relationship to poetry through a small‐scale qualitative study guided by the question: what happens to student perceptions of poetry when class begins each day with a poem? As a former teacher and current teacher educator, I conducted a series of interviews with a small group of my former students regarding their experiences with poetry throughout their K‐12 education and with hearing a poem each day in their high school English Language Arts classroom. I sought to explore the dimensions and possibilities of non‐analytical literacy practices in addition to student perceptions of poetry as they relate to schooling contexts more broadly.

The Beam in Our Own Eyes: Antiracism and YA Literature Through a Catholic Lens

As Catholic schools serve an increasingly racially diverse population of students, they must grapple with the critical requirement to address these students’ unique needs while heeding the call from modern Catholic Church leaders to engage in explicit antiracist action. Using the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework (HRL), this article equips Catholic high school English language arts (ELA) teachers with practical and powerful ways to create antiracist curriculum. To do this effectively, we place antiracist Young Adult (YA) literature (both fiction and nonfiction) in conversation with Catholic canonical texts and modern voices from Catholic clergy members. By connecting with students’ complex identities and creating authentic antiracist learning experiences, Catholic high school ELA teachers can better prepare their students to use both their knowledge and criticality of Catholic social teachings and their individual identities to combat racism.

What if it Were Otherwise? Teachers Use Exams from the Past to Imagine Possible Futures in the Teaching of Literature

ABSTRACTIn the United States, standardized tests shape what, how, and why English Language Arts teachers teach. For the last generation, these tests have increasingly taken a narrowly text‐centered approach to literature, making it difficult to enact or research alternatives. But what if it were otherwise? In the current study, we asked teachers to imagine alternatives to the current world of standardized testing. Drawing from a hundred years of New York state exams, we selected reader‐ and text‐centered essay prompts that represented a range of alternatives to current standardized exams. Then we interviewed 30 high school English Language Arts teachers from across the U.S., asking them to imagine what, how, and why they might teach with these alternative prompts in mind. Compared to their responses to a current Common Core aligned exam, when teachers responded to the alternative prompts, they were more likely to imagine selecting texts by authors of color, plan a wide variety of discussion‐based and writing activities, highlight the ethical dimensions of the teaching of literature, and envision the pleasure of aligning their beliefs with their instructional choices. As testing becomes more uniform, studies that imagine alternatives to the status quo allow for a broad exploration of the possibilities of language arts curriculum and instruction, as well as an understanding of teachers' untapped creativity and skill.

Oh, God: evangelical teachers, textual interpretation, and ELA classrooms

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how evangelical teachers’ religious identities influence their interpretation and teaching of texts in high school English Language Arts classrooms. Further, this paper examines how evangelical teachers make choices about how to balance the demands of their religious and teacher identities as they interact with texts in their own classrooms.Design/methodology/approachUsing Derridean deconstruction of the concept of ethical decision-making, the author uses critical discourse analysis to examine a conversation between two evangelical teachers as they talk about the tensions they feel as they teach The Crucible with their high school–aged students.FindingsThe findings show evangelical teachers’ religious and teaching identities were in tension across three themes: literary analytic frameworks, authorial intent and eternal truths and evangelism and fellowship.Originality/valueBy highlighting how evangelical teachers’ religious and teaching identities influence their classroom decisions, teaching practices and textual interpretations, this study offers another pathway through which teacher educators and researchers might examine the connection between teachers’ religious and teaching identities with the intent to invite more complexity into literary analysis.

Using Disability Studies in Education (DSE) for Effective Literacy Instruction

The Disability Studies in Education (DSE) framework can support teachers as they develop inclusive lessons integrating diverse instructional texts. It promotes the concept that all learners can read, comprehend, and discuss complex texts and it can expand opportunities for students with disabilities to participate in the same learning contexts as their nondisabled peers. The purpose of this manuscript is to provide teachers with background on the theory of DSE and offer practical strategies for integrating the principles of DSE into literacy instruction. The authors use a vignette to describe one way to experience integrating DSE in a high school English Language Arts special education classroom.

Empowering students’ writing through a more useful metalanguage: A language-based approach to high school English language arts

Many systemic functional linguistics (SFL) scholars have shown the usefulness of students’ and teachers’ abilities to utilize a functional metalanguage for school writing (Berry, 2009; Coffin, 2006; Humphrey & Macnaught, 2016; Macken-Horarik & Morgan, 2011; Rose & Martin, 2012). In the U. S., SFL work has primarily focused on teaching English as an additional language (de Oliveira, 2010a; de Oliveira & Dodds, 2010b; Gebhard, Harman, & Seger, 2007; Schleppegrell, 2009). Few scholars have explored the implications of this metalanguage for heritage English speakers (e.g., Brown, 2006, 2008, 2011) or stigmatized dialects of English like in Appalachia (Angus & Iddings, 2013; Iddings & Angus, 2015). This article presents a qualitative case study and SFL analysis of student writing to discuss the metalanguage used by twelfth-grade ELA students and teachers in Appalachian Kentucky. I argue that teachers can empower students to talk about and compose their writing with a more useful metalanguage.

Ideology, identity, and pedagogy in English language arts teachers’ linguistic styling in U.S. classrooms

Linguistic styling is an important component of the language ideologies teachers communicate to their students. This study explores the of role identity and intent in shaping teachers’ language use in the classroom, and considers how students receive teachers’ linguistic style. Three high school English Language Arts (ELA) teachers’ linguistic style is explored through three sources of data: a Dialect Density Measure, discourse analysis of marked instances of linguistic styling by each teacher, and interviews with the teacher and their students. The social meaning of differences in teachers’ styling of language is examined in relation to each teacher's social identity and the context of their teaching. Findings show that teachers use their style to model academic norms, to counter academic norms, to develop relationships with students, and to complicate ideas about what kind of person can use what kind of language. The marked differences in each teacher's styling reveal the pedagogical and relational work that language use enacts in classrooms. Implications for further study of teachers’ styling, and for supporting teachers’ critical language teaching are considered.

Using UDL to Plan a Book Study Lesson for Students With Intellectual Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms

Students with intellectual disabilities are among the least likely students to spend a significant amount of time in general education classrooms. When they are included, they may spend their time on non-academic learning experiences. Universal Design for Learning is a lesson planning framework that can guide teachers in inclusive lesson planning. This article explores the Universal Design for Learning framework and how teachers can incorporate it into the lesson planning process for a book study in high school English Language Arts. This lesson planning process provides genuine learning experiences to students with intellectual disabilities in the general education classrooms. The article offers examples of how to incorporate multiple means of representation, multiple means of engagement, and multiple means of expression and action within the four steps of the lesson planning process: learning goals, instructional methods, instructional materials, and assessment.

Social and Emotional Learning: Beyond Components and Outcomes

Social emotional learning (SEL) is the current zeitgeist in education. This collaborative self-study includes a teacher educator and her former student, a high school English Language Arts teacher. Both educators, who center relationships and social justice in their teaching, reflect on what they learned and identify and analyze three tensions experienced by the K-12 teacher: concerns about coming across as too political, responding to parent and caregiver reservations about teaching SEL, and grappling with teachers’ emotions in the classroom. Main takeaways are discussed, including the value of partnership between teacher educators and their former students in the development of teaching craft.

High School English Language Arts Teachers and Postsecondary Outcomes for Students With and Without Disabilities

We used longitudinal data on high school students in Washington State to assess the relationships between English Language Arts (ELA) teacher qualifications and the high school and postsecondary outcomes of their students, and whether these relationships differed for students with and without disabilities. We found that students assigned to 10th-grade ELA teachers with higher value added had better test scores, were more likely to graduate on-time, and were more likely to attend and graduate from a 4-year college than observably similar students assigned to 10th-grade ELA teachers with lower value added. We also found that many of these relationships varied for students with and without disabilities, as 10th-grade ELA teacher value added was more positively predictive of on-time graduation and 4-year college attendance for students without disabilities, but more positively predictive of 2-year college attendance and employment within 2 years of graduation for students with disabilities.

Instructional patterns for the teaching and learning of argumentative writing in high school English language arts classrooms

Argumentative writing has long been considered an essential skill for disciplinary learning. For researchers and curriculum developers to develop ecologically valid instructional approaches to argumentative writing, a pivotal prerequisite is the understanding of how teachers use various instructional methods in tandem to teach different argumentative components. This exploratory study identified instructional patterns for the teaching and learning of argumentative writing by observing 187 English language arts class sessions taught by 31 highly regarded high school English language arts teachers (529 students; 40% of the students were males). Multidimensional scaling identified three instructional patterns that vary in the level of teacher centeredness and dialogic interaction. These instructional patterns may reflect the occurrence of explicit teaching, dialogic learning, and in-class writing that was sometimes accompanied with teacher conferencing or coaching. Common across all of these practices was the teaching of claim and evidence. Warranting, counterargument, and response to counterargument, which are more complex forms of argumentation, tended to be taught by instructional practices involving low- to mid-level teacher centeredness and high-level dialogic interaction (e.g., small grouping, discussion). Overall, our findings highlight the gaps between what researchers suggest as effective approaches to teaching argumentative writing and how argumentative writing is currently taught in classrooms.

Reading Motivation in High School: Instructional Shifts in Student Choice and Class Time

AbstractResearch has shown that student choice of text and increased time spent on reading independently are two factors that can result in an increase in students’ reading motivation and enjoyment. The authors investigated implementation of evidence‐based practices to show how they played out in a high school English language arts classroom. The research was guided by two questions: (1) How does choice affect the reading motivation of a group of high school students? (2) How does silent reading time in class affect these students’ perceptions of reading? Findings reveal that students valued freedom of text choice, leading to increased reading self‐concepts and reading value. In addition, dedicating class time to reading and literature circle discussions helped students have more positive reading experiences than otherwise. These findings suggest benefits from flexibility in literature selection and instructional time, thereby providing a space in the classroom for student‐driven reading and discussion.

Why Are We Reading This? Hermeneutic Inquiry into the Practice of Teaching (with) Literature

Drawing upon my own experiences as a high school English Language Arts teacher, I seek a satisfying response to offer students when they ask, “Why are we reading this?” Such a query often leads teachers and students to consider broader questions of the purposes of literature. This paper presents a hermeneutic exploration of the practice of teaching (with) literature in the high school classroom. Using the writings of Gadamer (1989/2013) and Sumara (1996, 2002), and their conceptualizations of aesthetic (literary) experience, I outline a process of engaging with students in their desire to understand their roles as readers in the classroom. In doing so, I make an argument for playful and dialogic interactions between reader and text – an approach that both retains the integrity of aesthetic experience, and also invites a relational pedagogy among those who share a literary reading.

The Impact of English Learner Reclassification on High School Reading and Academic Progress

This study estimates the causal impact of 8th grade English learner (EL) reclassification on high school English language arts (ELA) standardized test scores, SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) reading, and on-track to graduate status. I apply a regression discontinuity design to rich administrative data from a large district in California. The estimated effects of eighth grade reclassification on 9th, 10th, and 11th grade ELA test scores were statistically insignificant, and I can rule out negative effects less than −0.17 SDs and positive effects larger than 0.09 SDs. The negative effect on SAT reading was fairly large, with a confidence interval of −0.27 SDs to 0.05 SDs. Estimates for on-track status in 10th and 11th grades were positive but imprecise.

Students at the Center: Insights and Implications of Authentic, 5E Instruction in High School English Language Arts

This paper explores the 5E model of lesson design (engage, explore, explain, extend, evaluate) in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms in consideration of an authentic teaching and learning framework. This quasi-experimental pre and post intervention study centers on student motivation and academic emotions regarding direct instruction in comparison to an authentic, 5E lesson. When comparing pre and post conditions across two types of instructional methods (direct instruction and authentic, 5E lessons), findings suggest students are less interested and more bored when participating in direct instruction experiences. Moreover, academic pressure increased in the authentic group while classroom mastery decreased.