English Education Research and Classroom Practice: New Directions for New Times

Abstract

I n exploring the role of research in the secondary school subject traditionally known as "English," we address a host of issues crowded with problems and potentials. Surely the perennially debated contours of the field have never been more in question, as new technologies and transforming patterns of civic, workplace, and global communication challenge us to enlarge our notions of what is truly basic in concert with the myriad opportunities, dangers, and complexities of today's world (Luke, 2004a(Luke, , 2004b. As those who teach the secondary subject and who provide teachers' professional preparation, English educators are positioned to serve as critical mediators of these new challenges. This is admittedly no easy undertaking, as academics' ongoing efforts to build ever-richer conceptions of literacy remain markedly at odds with the determined emphasis on basic skills both reflected in and reified by the No Child Left Behind initiative in the United States (U.S. Department of Education [USDOE], 2007). English educators therefore face the formidable task of negotiating between the complex vision of contemporary research and the modernist take on literate competency embedded in recent education policies (Yagelski, 2006), with their concomitant conception of research as "market commodity qua objective product testing and market research" (Luke, 2004a(Luke, , p. 1427.As U.S. states and districts respond to federal pressure to adopt practices based on "scientific" studies (USDOE, 2007), English educators are endeavoring to foster appreciation of the broader intellectual traditions that have shaped understandings of the high school subject through the years-including not only the social sciences but also literary studies, philosophy, and the arts (

Voice in the Context of Literacy Studies

“…Students learn to both read and write in a variety of digital contexts, and each of those contexts presents a different set of literacy requirements for both reading and producing text. These factors have not only changed the social contexts of literacy but also challenged our notions of reading and writing (see Sperling & DiPardo, 2008). Thus, new questions emerge regarding what voice is or might be in these changing contexts.…”

Comprehension and content: planning literacy in low socioeconomic and culturally diverse schools

“…Assumptions about universality and transfer of training are also central to cultural heritage and whole language models that stress the universal power of voice and rich literary experiences (cf. Sperling and DiPardo 2008).…”

Upending Colonial Practices: Toward Repairing Harm in English Education

“…English as a school subject in the US became inscribed over a century ago (Sperling & DiPardo, 2008), rendering invisible hundreds of longstanding Indigenous languages spoken prior to the arrival of settler colonialists (Zepeda & Hill, 1991). Until the 1970s, American Indian children were subjected to forced assimilation in English-only Americanization boarding schools wherein punitive, physically violent, and dehumanizing school practices were utilized in the name of teaching English (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006).…”