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Research in the Teaching of English is a broad-based, multidisciplinary archival journal composed of original research articles and short, scholarly essays on a wide range of topics significant to those [...]

This invited paper highlights the reflections of expert panelists who were spontaneously called upon, graciously accepted, and quickly organized to respond thoughtfully and compellingly to Dr. Arlette Willis' powerful and timely Oscar Causey address at the 2022 Literacy Research Association (LRA) annual conference. In her address, Dr. Willis issued a clarion call for a Transcendent Approach to Literacy (TAL) to a space where "We re-create literacy as an equitable and moral construct" (Willis, 2023, p. 133). This paper comprises Dr. Alfred Tatum's comprehensive introduction, the cogent reflections on TAL by panelists Dr. Josh Coleman, Dr. Marcus Croom, Dr. Matthew Deroo, Dr. Michiko Hikida, Dr. Emily Machado, Dr. Patriann Smith, Dr. Chad Waldron, and Dr. Rahat Zaidi, and Dr. Willis' eloquent epilogue. In her epilogue, she provides not an ending but the genesis of a movement forward for the LRA community to "be brave" and actively and genuinely engage in a TAL that "democratizes literacy, declaring literacy belongs to all."

Efforts to improve classroom language practices and children's language learning, as a means of supporting reading comprehension, may depend on teachers' knowledge about language structures and language development. To date, however, educational researchers and teacher educators have little understanding about teachers' knowledge about oral language. The current study reports on the development of the Teachers' Content Knowledge of Oral Language Survey (TCKOLS), a measure designed to assess preservice and in-service early childhood teachers' knowledge in this domain. The research team created the TCKOLS following a rigorous, iterative development process and conducted an initial pilot study with 32 preservice early childhood teachers and 26 pre-professional speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Findings support internal consistency and provide validity evidence for the measure. On average, preservice early childhood teachers correctly answered 69% of items and were particularly knowledgeable about vocabulary skills and development. As hypothesized, preservice early childhood teachers were less knowledgeable about oral language than pre-professional SLPs, and TCKOLS scores were significantly correlated with existing measures of vocabulary and morphological knowledge. Preservice teachers' preparation to support children's language learning, however, was not associated with their TCKOLS scores. The measure may be used in future research, to examine teachers' knowledge about language across samples and contexts and as related to classroom practices and children's learning, and to inform teacher preparation programs and professional development to better support such knowledge.

Recent stories raising the alarm about students' poor reading skills and calling for greater attention to the "science of reading" represent the latest round in the ongoing "reading wars." Going back at least as far as the 1950s, scholars, pundits and policy makers have debated which teaching strategies are most successful at helping students become proficient readers. However, Leah Durán and Michiko Hikida argue that these debates fail to get at the root issues behind students' poor reading performance. Even when schools with the lowest reading scores implement science-backed pedagogical approaches, these shifts do not make up for structural inequalities in facilities, resources, and teacher quality. Reading scores reflect problems rooted in class and race inequalities that cannot be resolved through pedagogy alone.

This article explores how critical pedagogy unfolds in the everyday interactions between teachers and students. Specifically, Freirean constructs of critique and dialogue were explored in two key literacy events drawn from an ethnographically informed case study of one fourth-grade classroom. The events were first examined from an ethnographic perspective to understand how sociopolitical issue(s) were being critiqued (or avoided). These events were then analyzed again through microanalytic discourse analysis to explore "how" teachers and students jointly accomplished dialogue and critique through proposing and taking up of particular stances toward text(s). By juxtaposing these two analytic lenses, the researchers argue for an understanding of critical pedagogy, particularly the tenets of critique and dialogue, as interactionally co-constructed in the continually evolving, everyday talk between teachers and students. This article closes by considering the implications of this work for classroom-based literacy research that examines critical pedagogy.

In this article, we argue that the "science of reading" (SOR) construct is being used to shape the future of literacy teacher preparation and silence the voices and work of literacy teacher education researchers to the detriment of quality science, quality teaching, and quality teacher preparation. First, we briefly inspect the SOR movement in terms of its historical roots in experimental psychology. Next, we examine the claims being made by SOR advocates regarding the absence of attention to the SOR literature in teacher preparation programs, and the related claims for the negative consequences that occur when these so-called underprepared teachers enter the workforce. Then, we present literature reviews, drawn from a large and dynamic database of research on literacy teacher preparation (over 600 empirical studies that were published between 1999 and 2018); the studies in the database have been excluded from the SOR. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of equity, agency, and design as a pathway forward in improving literacy teacher preparation.

Today's world requires attention to all aspects of initial literacy teacher preparation, including how and what preservice teachers learn about the component processes of reading. To address this imperative, a review was conducted of articles published from 2000 to 2018 identified through the CITE-ITEL database (https://cite.edb.utexas.edu) that reported findings related to reading processes and initial teacher preparation. After an inductive analytic process, the authors organize findings into five focus areas: (a) definitions and delimitations of reading processes, (b) studies of preservice teachers' beliefs about teaching reading processes, (c) research identifying preservice teachers' knowledge gaps and misconceptions, (d) intervention studies aimed at increasing preservice teachers' knowledge, and (e) studies detailing the application of knowledge about reading processes into contexts of pedagogical practice. The discussion considers the current gaps in how reading processes and literacy are conceptualized and possible areas of inquiry related to preservice teacher education and reading processes.

The term engagement is widely used in teacher education and professional development. There is, however, a lack of consensus about the meaning of this term: it is defined in numerous ways with various theoretical underpinnings. This article employs a postqualitative approach to explore conceptualizations of engagement and their implications for teaching and learning. Specifically, we examine written teaching reflections from one cohort of preservice teachers, asking: 1) How did preservice teachers use the word "engage(ment)" in their planning for and analysis of one-on-one literacy instructional events? and 2) What conceptualizations of engagement did these usages reflect? Through the analytic approach of thinking with theory, we plug these data into four theoretical perspectives that are relevant to preservice teachers' talk about engagement: 1) First Generation Activity Theory, 2) Reader Response Theory, 3) Self-Determination Theory, and 4) Inter-Comprehension Theory. We explore how each perspective illuminated our data, as well as questions that emerged. We conclude by (re)imagining engagement through a languaging relations perspective, arguing that this lens shifts toward a more humanizing conceptualization of engagement by centering the ongoing (re)making of relationships as people teach and learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few decades, scholars have conceptualized academic struggle, including learning disabilities, as socially constructed. When students, especially students of color, are constructed as struggling with school-based literacy, they can experience a variety of negative outcomes including higher dropout rates. In an attempt to unpack how academic struggle was constructed and deconstructed for two fifth-grade readers of color, we conducted a micoanalysis of the interactions between these readers and their teacher in one-on-one reading conferences. We examine how positions of struggle were (de)constructed, and findings suggest that the interactional key of the conferences, which was set by the teacher, seemed to contribute to how the students were positioned as readers within the conferring space.

Many students of color who are also identified as "struggling" readers are likely to have negative experiences in school. In this article, I discuss the findings of a case study examining how reader identities emerged in and through language for such students. The discourse data analyzed here concern an interactional pattern in which the focal students and their teacher collaborated in disrupting identities of deficiency, and instead constructed literate identities within whole-group discussions of text. These findings highlight moments of agency from students marginalized in schools and point toward ways that teachers and students can collaboratively create space for students' literate voices to be heard.

This article explores the interactional co-construction of identities among two first-grade students learning Spanish as a third language in a Spanish-English dual language classroom. Drawing on ethnographic and interactional data, the article focuses on a single interaction between these two "Spanish learners" and two of their Spanish-speaking classmates that took place within the context of a classroom literacy event. Analysis involved examining the sequential organization of talk, as well as identifying the particular linguistic resources that speakers recruited in their conversational turns. Findings showcase the interactional mechanisms by which students' identities were variously asserted, contested, and negotiated in everyday classroom talk. The article ends by offering implications and raising further questions with respect to the implementation of dual language education for multilingual students.

This article draws on qualitative data from two Spanish-English dual language elementary classrooms to explore how teachers in these classrooms made sense of the everyday practice of bilingualism. Methodologically, this study relied on participant observation, video recording, and semi-structured interviews. Conceptually, this article draws on the notion of "translanguaging" to describe how these teachers and their students moved fluidly across multiple languages and dialects in their everyday interactions. Drawing on "language ideological inquiry", this article illustrates that these teachers' perspectives on translanguaging sometimes echoed ideologies of linguistic purism that emphasize language separation, while also reflecting counterhegemonic ideologies that privilege Spanish and promote bilingualism. Teachers' everyday language use and instructional practices both reflected and contrasted with their stated ideologies. It is argued that a more nuanced understanding of teachers' complex language ideologies can inform efforts to help them embrace translanguaging pedagogies that recognize and build on students' everyday bilingualism.

The body of peer-reviewed research investigating literacy preservice teacher education is vast and broadcast widely in a variety of journals. What if there was a single, searchable, interactive platform where the literature was collected and synthesized? How might such a database inform research, practice, and policy? These were the questions faculty and graduate students from a large university in the Southwestern US set out to answer in 2015. Four years later, the authors introduce CITE-ITEL, a Critical, Interactive, Transparent, and Evolving review of literature on Initial Teacher Education in Literacy, an effort toward answering these important questions. The purposes of this paper are to share the methodology guiding the development of CITE-ITEL, to review some of the initial findings from the systematic review of the literature from 2000-2018, to describe the user experience of the CITE-ITEL database, and to propose future possibilities for CITE-ITEL and similar databases.

A substantial body of research has collectively concluded that encouraging students to draw flexibly on multiple aspects of their linguistic repertoires is positively associated with developing bilingualism, metalinguistic awareness, and academic skills. However, most bilingual education programs--including transitional and dual-language--limit, discourage, and/or stigmatize such practices. This study examines literature discussion in a fifth-grade bilingual education classroom, in which the teacher valued, supported, and facilitated hybrid language practices. The findings illuminate the ways in which the teacher and students flexibly used their linguistic and cultural resources to understand the text content and language.

The article discusses the current challenges in literacy, literature, and language arts education research, highlighting the importance of language's "midwifery properties" in promoting human dignity and new perspectives. It mentions the language's potential for oppression, the need for innovative ideas, and the recognition of universal human dignity, emphasizing these themes in the context of contemporary research and scholarship.

Although there is much research detailing the pedagogical constraints of high-stakes testing (HST), there is less that examines teachers' practices within and beyond its control. This multiple case study analyzes ethnographic data to explore two teachers' practices in an urban context where HST was relevant. Drawing on Foucault's conceptualization of a plague-stricken town, we explore the mobilization of disciplinary power associated with HST. We then examine teachers' agency as they taught beyond the administrative gaze. We found that teachers sometimes complied with administrative mandates while also articulating tensions of providing access and actively resisting/critiquing the test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]