Article Database

Getting into the Zone: Cases of Student-centered Multicultural Literacy Teacher Education

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The purpose of this article is to report our preliminary work on student-centered teacher preparation to promote school success among culturally and linguistically diverse learners. The authors believe that teacher education programs need to be very purposeful in their approach to multicultural literacy teacher education. Drawing upon Vygotskian perspective on learning, the authors chose two cases from the beginning of their teacher education program and during student teaching, which often marks the end of teacher education program. The authors explain the potential of a student-centered approach they experienced and its implications for teacher education programs.

Accelerating the College and Career Readiness of Diverse K-5 Literacy Learners

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Given the increasing demand for a well-educated American workforce, college and career readiness has become a significant educational priority. New educational initiatives, including the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, are being developed and implemented to prepare students for success in postsecondary education and the workplace. In this article, we discuss how college and career readiness standards have transformed expectations for literacy instruction in K–5 classrooms, especially for students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Given that students of color have been historically underserved in schools, we contend that these children need more equitable and enriched opportunities to learn academic literacies, content knowledge, and communication skills to achieve their future college aspirations and career goals. To that end, we offer key principles (i.e., community-oriented classrooms, close reading of complex texts, content-rich inquiry, and cultural connectedness) that elementary educators can use to design engaging learning environments and robust literacy lessons that advance the college and career readiness of all students.

Leveraging Students’ Future Professional Identities for Literacy Learning

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New Teachers as Literacy Leaders

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Learning Disabilities or Teaching Disabilities?: Rethinking Explanations for Literacy Failure

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It takes a literacy leader to save some schools and districts from serious misconceptions about the nature of core reading programs as well as the nature of some reading disabilities. Well‐prepared professionals can, by means of their extensive pedagogical repertoire, help districts to avoid compulsive repetition of the same fundamental types of instruction.

Will the Real Reader Please Stand Up?

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Literacy leaders in the classroom are often in a position to observe student characteristics and needs that accountability measures cannot detect. When students with obvious needs can still pass state tests, they can often be dubbed “proficient readers”. It will take a particularly insightful teacher, with a clear view of what reading achievement really means, to address those needs. In this article, literacy leaders are encouraged to speak out about the strengths and weaknesses of accountability measures and to conduct assessment in a way that builds on student strengths and interests, yet remains sensitive to a student’s home, community and culture. Literacy leaders are also encouraged to restore the voices of teachers to the assessment dialogue, particularly at a time when the U.S. seems poised to develop national standards and assessments to measure that often confuse the term “reading achievement”.

Teachers as Literacy Leaders

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The authors make the case that literacy leadership is not a quality restricted to specialists with extra certifications. Instead, literacy leadership qualities are within the grasp of every conscientious classroom teacher who is willing to take advantage of opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Preparing Responsive Reading Teachers with Vision

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Balancing the Assessment of and the Assessment for Learning in Support of Student Literacy Achievement

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There is a delicate balance between the assessment of learning and assessment for learning. The recommendations included in this Assessment department may be useful for teachers working to achieve this balance and find a more accurate and complete understanding of students’ literacy strengths and needs.

Beyond Cultural Awareness: Prospective Teachers’ “Visions” of Culturally Responsive Literacy Teaching

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Preparing prospective teachers to work effectively with culturally diverse students remains an ongoing challenge for literacy teacher educators. Current teacher education practices help prospective literacy teachers to enhance their cultural awareness and sensitivity, but they do not necessarily enable teachers to translate their cultural understandings into culturally responsive literacy instruction. This article explores the concept of vision as a reflective tool for helping prospective teachers articulate their ideals about culturally responsive literacy teaching. Analyses of 20 prospective teachers’ visions statements revealed five themes of culturally responsive literacy teaching: Elementary classrooms should serve as literacy communities; literacy teachers should serve as orchestrators within these communities; students should be active community members; learner-centered curriculum is the key to literacy development; and promoting ownership of literacy for diverse students is an essential societal goal. However, analyses also identified two blind spots, which represented conflict and controversy within the preservice teachers’ vision statements: classroom management and parental involvement. Findings from the study suggest that visioning may hold important benefits for preservice literacy teachers and literacy teacher educators who are concerned with providing culturally responsive teaching in elementary classrooms.