Literature Classroom Research Articles

Exploring a contemporary picturebook with young readers in the foundation phase

Background: Given the ongoing literacy crisis in South Africa, there is a need for teachers, as well as teacher education programmes, to explore various means to enable learners to develop reading comprehension. This study sought to examine the intricacies of a series of small group literacy activities that hinged on the in-depth and repeated engagement with a contemporary picturebook. Furthermore, it aims to evaluate whether children can develop an affinity for these books.Aim: The aim of the study was to explore the ways young readers engage with a contemporary picturebook by way of their oral and painted responses.Setting: The study was a qualitative case study, which took place at an urban public school in the Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg.Methods: The research design followed that of a case study. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews during two paired readings, as well as a focus group discussion (FGD). Additional data were collected through children’s painted artefacts and their subsequent individual interviews on these paintings.Results: The findings indicate that learners initially had superficial verbal engagements with the picturebook, which was complemented by more creative responses on further readings. Another finding was that the facilitation by the researcher and the interaction with peers improved the learners’ depth of engagement. Lastly, the learners’ initial basic descriptions of what was visible was complemented by a more nuanced appreciation of the aesthetic features of the picturebook.Conclusion: Based on the findings, it is concluded that full depth of picturebooks and their affordances in classroom literacy programmes be introduced in detail to pre-service and in-service teachers in order to foster rich and meaningful reading experiences for learners.Contributions: This research functions to contribute to the limited body of literature surrounding children’s reading experiences of picturebooks and overall learning specifically in South Africa.

Family literacies as peacemaking: Representations in Children’s literature

This paper presents an analysis of the discursive contours of peacemaking within families as represented in children’s literature. We turned to the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award (JACBA), which recognizes literature that engages children in thinking about peace and social justice. We analyzed the 2015-2021 collection of twenty-six award winning books for younger children. We found at least ten pathways of peacemaking that families engage in through their multimodal literacy practices. Drawing on family-centric peacemaking episodes, we present analytically rich portraits of how peacemaking unfolds at textual, ideational, and interpersonal levels across time, space, and generations. We argue this analysis provides us insight into the historical, political, and social realities that inform students and families’ lives in early childhood literacy classrooms.

A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers

This is a review of A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers: Reorienting Classroom Literacy Practices by Maya Pindyck and Ruth Vinz, with Diana Liu and Ashlynn Wittchow. The authors, U.S-based poets, educators, and arts-academics, share a crafted master class in creative thinking and poetic confidence building for teachers. They employ a strongly collaborative stance, and take readers with them on a poststructural journey by weaving together a collection of poems, scholarly literature, and resources which aim to provoke their teacher-readers to write. Readers should ready themselves with pen and paper, notebook, or computer as the many ”Invitations” (writing exercises which appear at the end of each chapter and in a section of their own towards the end) will have readers sliding into poetry and seeing it in the most unexpected places.

Case Study of Experiences with Transmediation for a Student with Learning Disabilities

This case study explored the experiences with transmediation by a fourth grade student with learning disabilities (LD) and his teacher. Findings revealed that the student encountered mixed responses to his practices by the classroom community. Underlying these perspectives were issues of social capital contributing to the power dynamics of the classroom, and two contrastive provincial curriculum documents guiding classroom literacy instruction and assessment. Drawing on these findings, we discuss the nuances and complexities of transmediation for students with diverse learning needs.

Negotiating Polycentric Power Dynamics in China through Digital Multimodal Composing

AbstractDigital multimodal composing (DMC) has been receiving increasing attention in the research on English as an additional language (EAL) instruction in higher education. While this approach responds to students' changing writing practices in the digital world, it can create tension with mandated curricula and high‐stakes testing regimes that prioritize print‐based essay writing as in China. However, little research has explored the possibility of negotiating the tension and bridging DMC and print‐based writing through instructional design. This article reports an instrumental case study that investigates a university instructor's pedagogical approach of using DMC in an academic literacy classroom in China. Through qualitative inductive analysis and multimodal analysis, this study identifies five centers of polycentric power relations and explores how and why the instructor designed, implemented, and evaluated the DMC project to leverage students' digital literacy interests, meet the goals of the national English curriculum, and prepare students for the standardized tests. We argue that she served as a digital literacy broker who not only harnessed students' passion for digital communication but also fulfilled the requirements of different centers.

Analysis of the Level of Critical Competence of Teachers Participating in the Distance and Face-To-Face Education Programme of the European Project “Media in Action”, Involving Spain, Italy, Malta, and the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT Critical competence is the most demanded by researchers and the most disadvantaged when it comes to measuring it, according to the results of the project. When it comes to measuring it, according to the results of studies consulted (Livingstone, 2003; Vicent González, 2014; Fedorov et al. 2015; Ferrés, 2018 and 2020; Pereira, 2018). In the studies reviewed on critical competence, a major deficiency was noted in the case of teachers, students, and families when it came to the critical analysis of information published in the media and the use of digital resources. Both the results of scientific studies (Gutiérrez-Marín et al. 2012) and European organizations and UNESCO agree on the need to urgently implement media and critical literacy in virtual classrooms. With the aim of promoting a reflective reading of media messages, this study aims to measure teachers’ critical competence through a series of practical exercises based on the analysis of advertising images, news and hoaxes using a quantitative methodology based on a survey, provided online, to teachers in five countries: Spain, Italy, Malta, and the United Kingdom. The surveys yielded valuable data confirming the effectiveness of training teachers through distance and/or face-to-face education in addressing misinformation and media manipulation.

Using Digital Game-based Learning to Foster Multimodal Literacy in Left-behind Children of Migrant Workers: Possibilities and Challenges

Digital games offer opportunities for the youth’s development of multimodal literacy required in the technology-driven world. However, both digital games and multimodal literacy are undervalued in rural contexts characterized by migrant parents and left-behind children. This qualitative case study conceptualized systematic guidance to foster students’ multimodal literacy through digital games and trialled its possibilities and challenges in enhancing left-behind children of migrant workers in a suburban school. Sixteen student participants engaged in critical game analysis and game video design in a 16-session classroom-based program, with the guidance of the researchers and two local teachers. Multiple data-collection methods were applied to capture students’ learning progress aligned with the teachers’ perceptions. Thematic analysis and multimodal analysis were utilized to process data. The findings indicate that this instructional approach deepened and broadened the students’ critical viewing and application of multimodal texts and enhanced their proficiency in leveraging digital tools for multimodal communication. The challenges include students’ varied competencies and motivation, time constraints, and limited access to digital devices. We advocate for integrating DGBL in literacy classrooms, thus catering to left-home students’ demands and social needs in the digital age. Meanwhile, joint efforts are necessitated to address perennial challenges in this education reform and inequities within the process.

Multilingual Learning Inside/Outside the Classroom: Insights from Intra‐Active Events

AbstractAs K‐5 dual language programs gain popularity in the United States, language teaching, however, often still prioritizes discrete and decontextualized learning that is not built on students’ interests and experiences or their multilingual and multimodal resources. This article reports on a classroom‐based ethnographic case study and illustrates how emergent bilinguals in a fifth grade dual language class engaged in a variety of multimodal experiences to understand local history through their first and second languages, community‐based inquiries, and writing. Drawing on translanguaging and new materialist understandings of language and literacy, the authors describe intra‐active events generated through museum activities and discussions in English and Chinese that allowed students to assemble whole‐body experiences and discussions in their journal writing about a day in the 18th century. The study shows how translanguaging can foster students’ engagement in learning as assemblages of their multilingual, multimodal, and multisensory experiences and support their writing processes and products, not only in a second language, but all language and literacy classrooms.

Translanguaging in English-medium instruction (EMI): Examining English literature content classrooms

Recently, translanguaging has begun challenging and replacing English-only policies in English-medium instruction (EMI) contexts, advocating that bi/multilingual learners may better internalise information in two or more languages. Within this perspective and using linguistic ethnography as the framework, this case study examines the translanguaging practices used by the instructor and the students in English literature classrooms and how/whether these practices mediate learning when multilingual resources are used for pedagogical purposes. The data for this study comes from the researcher, as the instructor, observing and recording their two content classrooms in an English Literature department, namely Contemporary British Novel and Discourse Analysis courses. These observations and recordings were analysed from a pedagogical translanguaging lens to identify the instructor’s input and the students’ output in terms of their display of linguistic repertoires in English (the language of instruction) and Turkish (the shared language in the classroom). The results provide implications for research and practice, offerings suggestions for how/whether a pedagogical translanguaging lens might be adopted in content classrooms.

The Problem of Non-Comprehension in Literacy Classrooms: An Exploration in Indian Context

The role of literacy is very significant in any person’s life and so is for the development of any nation. It is assumed that learning literacy would bring positive changes in person’s life. The literacy reports and documents inform a very grim picture of literacy in India. Children in primary schools are not able to read with comprehension and write meaningfully. Despite spending huge amount of money we still lag way behind to attain literacy. Reading and writing abilities of students are confined to gaining mastery over decoding skills and copying the text in the notebook. Study reports inform that such pedagogy pushes children to drop out from schools even without completing the primary schooling. The situation compels us to question the issue of development in such scenario. There is also an urgent need to challenge the existing definition and pedagogy of literacy. The present paper explores the definition of literacy from socio-cultural and critical literacy framework. The following section will critically discuss the pedagogy of literacy in classrooms and the final section will discuss about an alternative pedagogy for literacy teaching.

#BookTok's appeal on ninth‐grade students: An inquiry into students' responses on a social media revelation

AbstractOver the last years, the hashtag #BookTok has been viewed more than 100 billion times on TikTok. Hence, both scholars and practitioners have plead for integrating #BookTok in the literacy classroom, expressing the hope that this digital subculture might flip adolescents' conceptions of reading and improve their reading motivation. This article presents the first empirical inquiry into students' evaluations of #BookTok in an educational context. Reporting a survey study among 142 ninth‐grade students in the Netherlands, who were introduced to #BookTok through a compilation video featuring the most popular Dutch #BookTokers, the article shows that the phenomenon especially appeals to students who already read for pleasure frequently. Evaluations by book avoiders, on the other hand, were overwhelmingly negative. Promisingly, though, students who can be described as “book doubters,” who do not read often despite a relatively positive reading attitude, frequently reported an intention to use #BookTok, both in leisurely and educational settings. Hence, the article argues that integrating #BookTok in literacy education might especially serve students fitting the book doubter persona. At the same time, the results underline the importance of differentiation in the literacy classroom, also regarding the use of #BookTok.

Research on early literacy in Reggio and Montessori classrooms: A scoping review

This article presents the findings of a scoping review of 26 empirical studies that examined early literacy in Reggio Emilia and Montessori classrooms. A five-stage framework for conducting scoping reviews was used and led to the review of the selected studies. In addition, a thematic content analysis was conducted resulting in four main themes associated with the studies: 1. avenues for literacy learning, 2. home-school connection, 3. early literacy advantages, and 4. enriched literacy environments. The study contexts, research methods, and other relevant study characteristics are also reviewed and discussed. The results shed light on the research that has been conducted on early literacy in Reggio and Montessori environments. In addition, patterns across the two contexts are discussed and suggestions about future research are offered.

Retracted: The Cultivation of Political Identity Literacy in Ideological and Political Classroom Based on IOT and Knowledge Map

Retracted: The Cultivation of Political Identity Literacy in Ideological and Political Classroom Based on IOT and Knowledge Map

‘Oh No, The Poem is in Malay’: Examining Student Responses to Linguistic Diversity in Two Multicultural Asian Classrooms

ABSTRACT Hitherto, student responses to ethically oriented pedagogies in Literature classrooms have rarely been studied in non-western, multicultural contexts, and often assume monolingual text selections in English. As an Outer Circle English-using society, Singapore presents a multicultural Asian context worth studying where students connect aesthetic analysis with ethical issues. In this paper, I extend theorisations of ethical criticism concerned with constructing ethical meaning to interpretive discourse in classroom settings. I draw upon Derek Attridge’s notion of responsible readings to examine students’ responses to linguistic diversity in two multicultural Asian Secondary Four (Grade 10 equivalent) Literature classes from a co-designed unit on race and identity in Singapore in a larger study. Focusing on their translingual dispositions, I analyse how students express receptive and resistant responses in comparing three English translations of the Malay poem ‘Di Tengah Alam’ by Hadijah Rahmat, when minority-race students are linguistically privileged and majority-race students are linguistically disadvantaged.

Black Immigrant Literacies and the Promise of Unbroken Englishes: Five Things Every Teacher Should Know and Can Do

Abstract“Black immigrant literacies” is an intersectional framework that draws from diaspora literacy, racial literacy, and transnational literacy to center race and present teachers with a lens that can support Black immigrant students and their peers' literacies in classrooms. Black immigrant youth can be described as first‐, second‐, or third‐generation immigrants to the United States who identify as Black and who migrate to the United States from Africa, the Caribbean, or elsewhere. Many students from the Black immigrant population, though largely “invisible,” tend to be regarded as a new model minority and as designer immigrants. New model minority perceptions of Black immigrants persist because of claims of immigrant superiority and because Black immigrants have long been perceived as having socioeconomic advantages over their Black American peers. Given that Black immigrants originate primarily from the Caribbean or Africa, accounting for over half of all Black foreign‐born people in the United States, and considering that the Caribbean remains the most common region of birth for the over 4 million Black immigrants in the United States, accounting for almost half of the total, I paint a selective portrait of the intersectionalities surrounding Black immigrant literacies as a basis for teachers to better understand Black immigrant students' needs in classrooms. I also draw specifically from Black Caribbean immigrant literacies to identify and describe five things that every teacher should know and can do when encountering Black Caribbean in English language arts and literacy instruction. Through provisions such as legitimizing “unbroken Englishes,” supporting “translanguaging with Englishes,” cultivating “holistic literacies,” and fostering “local–global connections,” it is anticipated that teachers of Black immigrants in the United States, Caribbean, and beyond will begin to unmask invisibility of this population in their classrooms. Through the use of this framework, it is also expected that teachers will be able to better support all students who engage with the literacies of Black immigrants in United States schools.

Swedish Feminist Manga and Critical Comics Pedagogy in Natalia Batista’s Sword Princess Amaltea

This article considers the Swedish feminist manga Sword Princess Amaltea and its pedagogical paratexts. Originally released in three parts from 2013 to 2015, Sword Princess Amaltea was written and drawn by the Swedish comics artist Natalia Batista, and has been translated and published in several languages, including English and German. Batista’s manga draws inspiration from both Japanese shôjo or girls’ manga and Nordic feminist literature. In this article I show how Batista cleverly makes use of manga’s visual conventions to challenge conventional representations of gender, sexuality, and the gaze. As a manga aimed at least in part at younger readers in school contexts, Sword Princess Amaltea and its accompanying instructional materials raise questions of genre and visual literacy in the language and literature classroom. Calling attention to the transnational circulation of manga and its genres, I analyze Sword Princess Amaltea with its paratexts in order to demonstrate the potential for a queer and feminist comics pedagogy.

Impact of “Socratic Cues” on Young Learners’ Reasoning Abilities of Graphic Novels Through Writing Comprehension

Critical reasoning ability was regarded as an essential skill for the 21stcentury, and it was crucial for pupils to develop this skill beginning from a young age. This research was based on the problem where pupils could not provide critical ideas in writing and could not generate various ideas during their pre-writing stage. This study proposed to improve young learners’ reasoning ability using the Socratic questioning strategy when reading graphic novels in the English Literature classroom. Throughout this research, “Socratic cues” was introduced as a means of assisting pupils in doing their writing tasks and trigger pupils’ reasoning ability regarding a certain topic. This case study adopted a mixed-methods approach in which three instruments were used to obtain triangulated data that included a pre-and post-test, a semi-structured interview, and an observation checklist. The research participants were selected through nonprobability convenience sampling consisting of fifteen pupils from a rural primary school in Negeri Sembilan. The results indicated that using “Socratic cues” had a positive impact on improving all fifteen participants’ reasoning ability through graphic novels. Through the use of Socratic cues, it was evident that pupils felt empowered and engaged in the classroom

Authors of everyday life. Towards learning with literary learner texts in English language education

In the digital realm of the 21st century, the production and distribution of literature has changed drastically; writing literary texts is no longer a privilege of professional authors and publishers but has transformed into a participatory practice, with non-professional writers sharing their own literary narratives via social media platforms. This digital practice has become particularly relevant among teenagers and young adults as they increasingly use the opportunity of producing and sharing their own literary texts as a means of negotiating their identities and the social environments around them. Literature, thus, enables teenagers to participate in society by voicing their own personal and social concerns. Given their value in the context of engaging in these meaning-making processes on the one hand, and the role and importance of English as one of the lingua francas in digital realms on the other, these digital literary practices also need to be reflected in contemporary English language education (ELE). However, this hardly seems to be the case so far. Although literary texts still play a very prominent role, particularly in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms in Germany, current approaches to learning with literature still appear to perceive learners as recipients of professional literary texts, while production-oriented perspectives on teenagers as authors of their everyday lives, which go beyond post-reading creative tasks, seem to hold a most marginal position. Thus, digital texts written by learners (i.e., literary learner texts) are hardly considered as source texts. This theoretical contribution argues that contemporary practices of learning with literature need to be complemented by also focusing on literary works created by learners on multiple levels of classroom action. Drawing on interdisciplinary concepts, it explores the relevance of this focus in detail and makes first suggestions for framing literature classrooms based on literary learner texts.

Along and Against the Grain: Close reading The History of Mary Prince

Due to the highly mediated conditions of its production, The History of Mary Prince presents a challenge to New Critical methods of reading that are frequently taught in undergraduate literature classrooms. Without questioning the British abolitionists’ textual representation of Prince’s experiences, readers unfamiliar with the historical conditions for slave narratives may attribute the publication’s sentimentalism and representations of violence as direct expressions of Prince. This essay mobilizes close reading towards contrary ends: I throw the editor’s (Thomas Pringle’s) paratextual material, particularly the Preface, under scrutiny by close reading its insistence on transparency and symmetry between the first-person narrative and Prince as the narrative's univocal source. Using the Preface as an apparatus for close reading The History, I emphasize the dissonance between, on the one hand, the British abolitionists’ textual representation of freedom and, on the other, Prince’s speech as a practice of freedom. Drawing on the methods developed by Marisa Fuentes and Ann Laura Stoler, I offer historical and geographical contexts that can be layered onto close readings exercises for The History – particularly around repeated tropes of salt and allusions to sugar – that destabilize Thomas Pringle’s, and by extension the London Antislavery Society’s, representation of Prince’s public image. I argue how the paratextual materials of The History can help instructors foreground the contradictions and asymmetries of power embedded in subaltern representations.

Cross-Border Dialogues: A Collaborative Instructional Design Inquiry to Promote Equity and Diversity

The COVID-19 pandemic complicates ingrained educational inequalities around the globe and foregrounds the pertaining challenges that teachers have encountered due to school closures and the shift to distance learning. This cross-border teacher education project intended to examine how academics and pre-service teachers in different geographic locales could collaboratively explore equitable learning opportunities for diverse learners through the use of critical media literacies to respond to interconnected global crises. In this six-week cross-border teacher education project, we recruited four Mandarin and English literacy teacher candidates in Hong Kong to interact with one another and one Canadian professor as part of the teacher preparation phase of a larger-scale cross-border research project that connects youth from Hong Kong and Canada in a social networking space. For the purposes of teacher professional development, the Hong Kong teacher candidates and Canadian researchers engaged in collective exploration of how instructional designs in literacy education could promote equitable learning opportunities for diverse learners. Findings show that the cross-border teacher education project supported teacher candidates’ development of pedagogical skills and espoused their agency in promoting educational equity and collective problem-solving through critical media literacies. Findings relate the teacher candidates’ shifted perspectives from focusing on students’ decontextualized language skills to nurturing critical media skills. Changing from a deficit-oriented view about what literacy learners could not do, the teacher candidates also adopted an asset-oriented view about the linguistic and cultural repertoires that diverse learners could bring to literacy classrooms.