In this paper, I reflect on the past decade as an educator and graduate student to highlight the joy that accompanied my shifting understanding of literacy. I conducted an autobiographical narrative inquiry and used selections from blog entries and graduate coursework in order to reflect on my “moments of turning”. I begin with a logocentric understanding of literacy as a white settler in two Indigenous communities, but over time embrace a multimodal, embodied, emergent, place-based, and more-than-human conception of literacies within a context of the climate and nature emergency. This conception learns from and with Indigenous ways of knowing rooted in ecology, relationships, and the land. I argue that this understanding of literacies brings joy and opens possibilities in a precarious world.

Multilingual students enter classrooms with complex language, literacy, and cultural repertoires. Drawing on these repertoires, they use knowledge, skills, practices, and perspectives that make their language and literacy practices dynamic. This paper, based on a context review of educational policies and practices in the United States, as well as a literature review of transformative pedagogies, asserts the importance for teachers to honor and empower students’ use of dynamic practices to make and share meaning. To this end, and in order to help reframe education for multilinguals, in this paper we provide strategies to help foster students’ multilingualism, multiliteracies, and multiculturalism.

While many scholars note the important role disciplinary literacy can play in advancing social justice, much of the current research focuses on how English experts approach canonical texts of Western origin. This article investigates the meaning-making approaches employed by 11 English disciplinarians when approaching texts of Indigenous origin. These scholars participated in semi-structured interviews and participated in a read-aloud. Findings highlight that, in addition to traditional disciplinary practices such as contextualizing, performing definitional work, and drawing upon background knowledge, approaching Indigenous texts requires specific meaning-making practices grounded in Indigenous frameworks and drawing upon specific Indigenous Literary tools. This study hopes to show how disciplinary meaning-making practices, as applied to Indigenous literature, can allow expanded access to these diverse perspectives.

Effective implementation of a new curriculum requires investment in curriculum leaders, educator capacity-building, and resources. In their most recent curriculum releases, the Ontario Ministry of Education has failed to effectively support curriculum implementation (Office of the Auditor General for Ontario, 2020). Using a mixed-methods online survey, this study investigates the initial implementation of the Ontario Language Curriculum 2023 as perceived by Ontario educators. Research suggests that the Ministry of Education failed to adequately equip Ontario’s educators with professional development and resources in the initial implementation phase. Furthermore, it suggests strategies that can bolster implementation moving forward.

This study examines multilingual high school students’ responses to social studies assignments as a window into their content area literacy experiences in Canadian schools. Data for this study are drawn from two qualitative case studies which produced retrospective accounts for two multilingual learners who had completed high school in Alberta. The participants were undergraduate students at a reputable Canadian university when they participated in the research. The study highlights what was challenging for the students and how their efforts in written assignments took direction from what their teachers emphasized. The students’ perspectives on their experiences with the content area writing in social studies can inform thinking about related instruction and research.

Teaching for social justice is an explicit goal of most teacher education programs. However, this mandate has been criticized by scholars who claim that social justice is an undertheorized and vague concept that is often disconnected from methods courses that focus on content-specific pedagogies. This study seeks to address this disconnect by exploring how an Equity Literature Circles (ELC) framework within a literacy methods course can enhance teacher candidates’ (TCs’) understanding of the relationship between literacy instruction, diversity, and social justice. Drawing on the perceptions of ten TCs enrolled in a teacher education program in western Canada, data for the study was generated from classroom artifacts, an individual survey, and a focus group interview. Upon analysis of the data, the findings suggest that an ELC framework is an effective instructional strategy for enhancing TCs’ understanding of intersecting aspects of diversity, equity-focused literacy instruction, and teaching about and for social justice. Teaching for social justice is an explicit goal of most teacher education programs. However, this mandate has been criticized by scholars who claim that social justice is an undertheorized and vague concept that is often disconnected from methods courses that focus on content-specific pedagogies. This study seeks to address this disconnect by exploring how an Equity Literature Circles (ELC) framework within a literacy methods course can enhance teacher candidates’ (TCs’) understanding of the relationship between literacy instruction, diversity, and social justice. Drawing on the perceptions of ten TCs enrolled in a teacher education program in western Canada, data for the study was generated from classroom artifacts, an individual survey, and a focus group interview. Upon analysis of the data, the findings suggest that an ELC framework is an effective instructional strategy for enhancing TCs’ understanding of intersecting aspects of diversity, equity-focused literacy instruction, and teaching about and for social justice.

Although technology-enhanced learning has exploded, limited research has examined English language learners’ (ELLs) experiences and perceptions of independent online content-based second language learning. To fill this gap, an innovative web application was designed to improve ELLs’ grade 10 science content and English language learning. Fifty-six high school ELLs independently completed 30 online modules and then responded to a 12-item questionnaire about the web application, the module content, and their learning. An applied thematic analysis of their responses revealed several benefits and a few challenges that provide insights for the development and improvement of independent online content-based learning for high school ELLs.

Literacy Teachers Navigating Turbulent Times in Canada / Faire face à la tempête : enseignement, littératie et instabilités au Canada. Un article de la revue Language and Literacy / Langue et littératie (Special Issue: Literacy Teachers Navigating Turbulent Times in Canada) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.