Exploring Cultural Responsiveness in Literacy Tutoring

Embracing a culturally responsive teaching pedagogy in classrooms is one means for addressing literacy inequities with students of color. Afterschool literacy tutoring is another means of addressing these inequities, but little is known about implementing culturally responsive teaching in afterschool environments. This qualitative case study explored how cultural differences impacted an urban elementary afterschool literacy tutoring program. Grounded in participatory literacy theory, the authors conclude that it is normal for cultural differences to occur and cause disruptions during tutoring; however, culturally responsive teaching can mitigate these interruptions through developing caring relationships, creating a safe learning environment, implementing a participatory student-centered curriculum using online resources, and critiquing social inequalities. The discussion offers seven principles of culturally responsive teaching to use in literacy instructional environments.

#TextMeetsTech

This chapter addresses the need to make time and space for transliteracy practices in the classroom. University pre-service teachers are used as the primary example as the chapter documents how these students made meaning across a range of platforms, while reading the acclaimed young adult novel The Hate U Give. The university course, titled Language and Literacy, focuses on methods of literacy instruction in the classroom. A lesson plan framework is included in the chapter that is especially user friendly for educator preparation classrooms as well as high school and middle school teachers. The chapter explores the experiences of the college students while reading The Hate U Give, while detailing how the students created meaning through a variety of traditional and modern teaching practices.

Complexities of Identity and Belonging

Engaging in artifactual literacy as a collective in a teacher education seminar class gives space for objects and texts to bring forth reimagined and alternative ways to be “teacher.” An elementary teacher education program utilizes a seminar space to invite teachers to write from artifacts to analyze, deconstruct, and reconstruct their teacher identities. The analysis and discussions of the reconstructed narratives that define, contest, or shape identities give needed distance from traditional and often constricting narratives of “teacher” and “teaching.” The investment of this critical identity work in teacher education is depicted in the analysis of two preservice teachers' collective writing in a digital space.

The Truth We Can't Afford to Ignore

Popular media has become a central aspect of life for many individuals. With that exposure to media comes imagery that contains messages both covert and overt that are readily consumed by the viewers. Adolescents are especially influenced by these images because of their frequency and use of media. This study addresses the ways in which middle school students interpret and internalize stereotypical imagery found in popular culture, specifically reality television, and examines the role of the teacher and greater school community in helping students to identify and mediate stereotypical images. Through participatory literacy strategies, classrooms everywhere can become an educative, critical, thoughtful space for both students and teacher.

Participatory Literacy and Taking Informed Action in the Social Studies

The purpose of the social studies is to prepare students for life as citizens in a democratic society, and this requires attention to the variety of digital spaces inhabited by our K-12 students in today's increasingly digitized world. Incorporating participatory technologies into structured inquiries in the social studies may help develop students' skills and abilities in critically sourcing, evaluating, sharing, and creating media, and provides the opportunity for increasingly democratic participation and civic engagement both in and out of the school setting. In this chapter, the authors suggest the integration of participatory literacy with the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) framework as a means of supporting students in taking informed action.

Preparing 21st Century Teachers

When teachers use technology and digital tools for academic purposes, they are more apt to introduce it to their K-12 students. This chapter describes methods used by teacher educators to incorporate technology into their courses to help candidates meet professional standards, and methods used by teacher candidates to incorporate technology into their teaching to help P6 students meet technology and 21st century standards. Teacher preparation programs should introduce candidates to different technologies and software programs, provide opportunities for candidates to use the tools, and guide candidates as they develop learning resources in the field using the technology. Three factors impacted candidates' use of technology: their perceptions about their capabilities as users of technology in academic contexts, their experiences using technology, and their access to resources such as digital devices and software. Although some pitfalls occurred with program-wide technology integration, the study offers strategies for addressing these obstacles.

Literacy in Early Childhood

This chapter is based on a year-long ethnographic research study in a Title I urban classroom with 24 seven- and eight-year-olds. Using this work, the author shares ways of teaching literacy to young readers using technology and building on student interests. In particular, students' stories constructed through Lego play and digital photography are showcased. Three major themes are identified and discussed: (1) digital play as an essential tool for story, (2) multimodal storytelling as a path for learning and new language, a (3) apprenticeships for multimodal text productions. The chapter concludes with practical suggestions for educators about ways to capitalize on students' funds of knowledge as well as their passion for digital tools in the 21st century classroom.

Rethinking Writing Pedagogy

This chapter examines practices, strategies, and assessments used to support preservice and inservice teachers in becoming digital writers who can thoughtfully integrate digital and multimodal writing into their pedagogical practice. The chapter is organized into two sections: (1) a research-based discussion of goals and strategies for integrating digital and multimodal writing into preservice and inservice teacher education courses, and (2) concrete examples of activities and assessments for teacher education courses that can successfully scaffold teachers into becoming digital writers. Findings demonstrate that the thoughtful and purposeful integration of digital, multimodal writing into teacher education courses can shift understandings of writing as a participatory practice and support teachers in successful classroom integration.

Can Everyone Code?

The learn-to-code movement is no longer just supported in computer science classrooms; instead, coding instruction has proliferated widely throughout the kindergarten through 12th-grade levels. Yet, educators are just beginning to understand the complexities with teaching students to code. In this research, the authors posit that coding is a language that can be taught through a literacy-based lens. In this chapter, the authors share findings from a study that examined pre-service teachers' aptitudes, interests, and background knowledge for teaching Swift to elementary school students. In addition, the authors explain how teachers were able to transfer what they learned about coding in Swift Playgrounds to a similar task on a different platform. The chapter ends with examples of how primary-grade teachers employed aspects of literacy instruction to teach basic coding using a variety of applications and tools.

“I Would Like Other People to See His Stories Because He Was Woke!”

This chapter explores the varied participatory practices that were triggered during the Spring 2016 iteration of the Digital Dialogue Project (DDP), an initiative that connected different age groups in distinct subject-area classes within contrasting schools embedded inside divergent communities. During the project, youth (from 3rd grade to 12th grade) engaged in three phases: (1) producing multimodal products connected to curricular goals, (2) virtually sharing/viewing/commenting on the digital product with small groups of 3-5 youth from different schools, and (3) meeting face to face at a culminating field trip to engage in collaborative theater exercises to dramatically embody the groups' digital stories. Authors provide concrete examples of the kinds of participation that the DDP evoked as well as key pedagogical commitments to literacies that were central to designing and implementing the project. Throughout the chapter, real talk for practicing teachers is provided in order to offer guidance for those interested in imagining similar participatory projects for youth.