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This article examines the accounts of actions undertaken by Early Career Teachers (ECTs) recently graduated from a social justice-oriented Initial Teacher Education (ITE) program and employed in complex school settings with high levels of student diversity, disadvantage, and poverty. The study drew on theories of teacher agency and agency more broadly to examine the workshadowing observations of the teachers' practice in classrooms augmented by their reflective accounts in interviews. The study found that the ECTs' agency, or contextualised social action, can be conceptualised as temporally embedded social engagement directed at addressing their students' cultural, social and academic needs. The teachers drew on past learnings from their ITE program, committed to future-oriented innovations in teaching, and made in-the-present decisions about actions to resolve emergent contingencies such as resource shortages. We argue that these understandings are usefully enhanced by recognising contingency, consciousness, criticality and creativity as additional features of the teachers' deliberative programs of action.

This article examines teachers' work as part of the everyday life of classrooms, schools and communities--as curriculum design, dynamic pedagogies and as an oeuvre which is assembled over time. One of the hardest aspects of the everyday work of teachers, and perhaps one of the most under-rated and under-studied, is listening, really listening. This article firstly explores the dangers of teachers not listening. Secondly, it highlights the contributions of teacher researchers who take students and their worlds seriously. We argue that teachers listening to students in the context of their communities can underpin responsive pedagogies and creative curriculum design, which in turn can allow students to assemble repertoires of complex communication practices for representation, participation and taking action. Finally, we speculate about how, over time, teachers, as artists, assemble an oeuvre--an assemblage of curriculum design and responsive pedagogies which could inform teacher education and research.

The fields of science and literacy education continue to be shaped by pervasive gender inequality. Previous research has documented how the formation of a 'science identity' is contingent on access to science capital while research in literacy education continues to highlight how boys struggle in their literacy acquisition. Despite a robust scholarship on gendered literacy practices and gender in STEM subjects, to date, there has been little investigation of the relationships between boys' science identity/ies and their literacy practices. We draw on a case study of 24 middle school boys living and learning in two different regions (e.g. metropolitan, rural) where we focus on how boys conceive of themselves as learners in two curriculum areas: science and literacy. Bridging multiple areas of scholarship (e.g., science literacy, science identity, boys in schooling), we concentrate on the participants' "self-belief in science" and "self-belief as readers" and consider the way they inform each other in reference to place. The implications of our study concern how the "science literate boy" comes to be in reference to the construction of discursive performances of science masculinities and how they are maintained alongside literate identities.

Parental involvement in schooling has been shown to have a positive impact on children's educational outcomes. With changing mathematics curricula and pedagogical approaches as a context, we explore how mathematical dispositions emerge through gendered and classed experiences with mathematics homework. We share the experiences of mothers from eight Canadian families as they negotiate mathematics homework with their children. We consider the impact of their differing access to resources and highlight the way mathematics homework disrupts family time, creates tension, and contributes to a sense of inadequacy for some mothers. This results in mothers and children having negative experiences with mathematics homework, which can lead to the compounding of intergenerational negative mathematical dispositions and identities.

The importance of community has been widely recognised in the field of early childhood education. However, the various ways it has been conceived, together with taken-for-granted notions of education, have made it difficult to actualise the processes involved in contextually meaningful ways. This article draws on cultural models theory to explore educational leaders' re-imagining and redesigning of early childhood educational learning communities in a range of diverse settings. The examination of the processes and artefacts used to promote democratic identities and agency highlights the significance of establishing shared principles, sociality and challenging power relations to engage in processes of communing that are contextually meaningful, sustainable and democratic.

Sourcing information related to socio‐scientific issues requires sophisticated literacies to read and evaluate conflicting accounts often signified by disagreement among experts, multiple solutions or misinformation. Much of the previous work exploring how young people approach conflicting information has tended to focus on students in the secondary and tertiary years, often taking an epistemic approach to analysis, rather than a literacies lens. At the heart of such endeavours, however, is the need for sophisticated reading skills accelerated by shifts to digital platforms to source information. Given the limited empirical studies in the field of literacy that articulate how middle school students approach sources of information, this study investigates 45 middle school students' (13–14 years of age) self‐reported strategies for investigating health risks associated with mobile phone use. We asked the students to imagine that a close friend was worried about the health risks of using their mobile phone and had asked them for advice. Students were then prompted to describe how they would search for information about the issue and how they would know if the information was reliable. Our analysis identified three dominant themes in the interview data, namely: (i) mistrust of the internet—people can be reliable sources; (ii) reliable sourcing requires consensus across sources; and (iii) criteria help to determine a reliable source. An interesting finding was the level of scepticism of the internet expressed by students. We draw on examples from the students' interview dialogue to illustrate the themes and engage in discourse related to their approaches including implications for teaching in English classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literacy skills are essential if students are to access knowledge and achieve academic success in middle school science. A key difficulty with interpreting literacy practices in any discipline is the problem of conceptualising what constitutes literacy. Our study contributes new understandings to the discipline of science where there are ongoing debates concerning the meaning of literacy and confusion regarding what constitutes essential literacies in the field. Our scoping review first identifies how literacy in middle school science is conceptualised in empirical studies published between 2006 and 2019 and, second, addresses a significant gap in understandings by identifying how dominant discourses inform practice. Specifically, our findings show the dominance of a narrow conception of literacy in the science classroom relating to skills-based pedagogic instruction. Based on our review, we conclude that the field of science requires a broadening of what constitutes literacy, and engagement with New Literacy Studies which focuses on literacy as a social practice closely interwoven with student identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fields of science and literacy education continue to be shaped by pervasive gender inequality. Previous research has documented how the formation of a 'science identity' is contingent on access to science capital while research in literacy education continues to highlight how boys struggle in their literacy acquisition. Despite a robust scholarship on gendered literacy practices and gender in STEM subjects, to date, there has been little investigation of the relationships between boys' science identity/ies and their literacy practices. We draw on a case study of 24 middle school boys living and learning in two different regions (e.g. metropolitan, rural) where we focus on how boys conceive of themselves as learners in two curriculum areas: science and literacy. Bridging multiple areas of scholarship (e.g., science literacy, science identity, boys in schooling), we concentrate on the participants' self-belief in science and self-belief as readers and consider the way they inform each other in reference to place. The implications of our study concern how the science literate boy comes to be in reference to the construction of discursive performances of science masculinities and how they are maintained alongside literate identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines teachers' work as part of the everyday life of classrooms, schools and communities—as curriculum design, dynamic pedagogies and as an oeuvre which is assembled over time. One of the hardest aspects of the everyday work of teachers, and perhaps one of the most under-rated and under-studied, is listening, really listening. This article firstly explores the dangers of teachers not listening. Secondly, it highlights the contributions of teacher researchers who take students and their worlds seriously. We argue that teachers listening to students in the context of their communities can underpin responsive pedagogies and creative curriculum design, which in turn can allow students to assemble repertoires of complex communication practices for representation, participation and taking action. Finally, we speculate about how, over time, teachers, as artists, assemble an oeuvre—an assemblage of curriculum design and responsive pedagogies which could inform teacher education and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of community has been widely recognised in the field of early childhood education. However, the various ways it has been conceived, together with taken-for-granted notions of education, have made it difficult to actualise the processes involved in contextually meaningful ways. This article draws on cultural models theory to explore educational leaders' re-imagining and redesigning of early childhood educational learning communities in a range of diverse settings. The examination of the processes and artefacts used to promote democratic identities and agency highlights the significance of establishing shared principles, sociality and challenging power relations to engage in processes of communing that are contextually meaningful, sustainable and democratic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on work that brings literacy instruction and student science learner identity together, this study addresses a gap in research related to student experiences as readers in middle school science classrooms. To understand student perceptions of pedagogical approaches to reading in science, we asked 45 middle school students to reflect on what sort of reading participation was valued in their classroom and what they thought characterised a good learner in science. Findings show that evaluative reading is not perceived as central to learning; rather, a transmission pedagogic model of reading with an overreliance on fact sheets, worksheets and PowerPoint was reported. Students also drew attention to how listening to the teacher for information and following instructions related to practical activities is integral to a 'good science student' identity. Findings suggest that beliefs about what is valued in science classrooms has implications for science learner identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]