Advocacy Research In Literacy Education

This book reviews what the authors term advocacy research in literacy education-research that explicitly addresses issues of social justice, equity, and democracy with the distinct purpose of social transformation. It surveys what educational researchers who are working for social justice have accomplished, describes current challenges, and outlines future possibilities. The first section maps the terrain of advocacy research in literacy education. The authors group this large and expanding body of research into four categories: Critical Literacy(ies); Radical Counternarratives in Literacy Research; Literacy as Social Practice; and Linguistic Studies. Each chapter describes the research area, traces its history, provides example studies, and assesses the contributions of research to advocacy work now and potentially in the future. The second section provides a deeper consideration of challenges to the field of advocacy research and suggests future directions for research and scholarship; this section reflects the need to complicate and trouble the terms and relations between and among social justice, ethics, democracy, freedom, and literacy. As a whole, this book is a response to the current popular understandings of literacy education that limit the efficacy of advocacy work in these troubled times-understandings that support the proliferation of standardized testing, teacher testing, and scripted lessons and programs, along with the privileging of particular forms of research. Intended for those who work or soon will work in literacy education-students, teacher educators, researchers, and practitioners-this book represents the authors' belief that it is time for advocacy workers to strengthen and intensify their efforts to promote the most principled, effective literacy education for democratic life. It is their hope that this book will contribute to such an effort.

This book reviews what the authors term advocacy research in literacy education-research that explicitly addresses issues of social justice, equity, and democracy with the distinct purpose of social transformation. It surveys what educational researchers who are working for social justice have accomplished, describes current challenges, and outlines future possibilities. The first section maps the terrain of advocacy research in literacy education. The authors group this large and expanding body of research into four categories: Critical Literacy(ies); Radical Counternarratives in Literacy Research; Literacy as Social Practice; and Linguistic Studies. Each chapter describes the research area, traces its history, provides example studies, and assesses the contributions of research to advocacy work now and potentially in the future. The second section provides a deeper consideration of challenges to the field of advocacy research and suggests future directions for research and scholarship; this section reflects the need to complicate and trouble the terms and relations between and among social justice, ethics, democracy, freedom, and literacy. As a whole, this book is a response to the current popular understandings of literacy education that limit the efficacy of advocacy work in these troubled times-understandings that support the proliferation of standardized testing, teacher testing, and scripted lessons and programs, along with the privileging of particular forms of research. Intended for those who work or soon will work in literacy education-students, teacher educators, researchers, and practitioners-this book represents the authors' belief that it is time for advocacy workers to strengthen and intensify their efforts to promote the most principled, effective literacy education for democratic life. It is their hope that this book will contribute to such an effort.

What counts as professionalism for teachers today? Once, teachers who knew their content area and knew how to teach it were respected as professionals. Now there is an additional type of competency required: in addition to content and pedagogical knowledge, educators need advocacy skills. In this groundbreaking collection, literacy educators describe how they are redefining what it means to be a teaching professional. Teachers share how they are trying to change the conversation surrounding literacy and literacy instruction by explaining to colleagues, administrators, parents, and community members why they teach in particular research-based ways, so often contradicted by mandated curricula and standardized assessments. Teacher educators also share how they are introducing an advocacy approach to preservice and practicing teachers, helping prepare teachers for this new professionalism. Both groups practice what the authors call “everyday advocacy”: the day-to-day actions teachers are taking to change the public narrative surrounding schools, teachers, and learning.

The recent wave of teacher protests across the U.S. has shined a spotlight on advocacy in education. In an age when schools are underfunded to the point of unmanageable class sizes, outdated texts, dilapidated school buildings and shortened school weeks, educators must use their voices and advocate in order to preserve public education. This book addresses multiple strategies and approaches advocacy can take through the lens of teachers, administrators, teacher educators and community leaders. It can serve as a roadmap geared toward educators of all backgrounds and experience levels, from preservice teachers to seasoned administrators, as well as teacher educators who want to dispel the myth that public schools are failing. Too often, educators are expected to be advocates without any guidelines provided. Even though they are powerful in numbers, they are often isolated in their classrooms in attempt to meet the increasing needs of their students and the daunting demands of the educational system. This volume highlights opportunities for educators to serve as advocates by getting involved, which can take many shapes and forms. Individual chapters built around specific themes show how educators can use advocacy to forge connections, problem solve, resolve conflict, develop as professionals, enter into dialogue, utilize branches of government and become sustained education advocates. The four themes in this book are teacher advocacy, teacher and teacher education, leadership and administration and community collaborations.

A critical resource for literacy educators and graduate students, this volume investigates key moments in the development of literacy education and provides a much-needed overview of where, when, and how efforts to shape education influence literacy teaching, as well as what literacy educators can do to advocate for themselves, their students, and the profession. Organized around three themes—history, effects, and advocacy—this volume offers a nuanced exploration of the complex issues surrounding literacy education, and suggests coherent approaches to evaluating and understanding the various policies and reform efforts, and their impacts on literacy teaching and learning. Chapter authors draw on a variety of research– and practice-based perspectives to explore the impact of reform on literacy and literacy education, and examine the evolution of literacy education, providing much-needed historical context for shifts in policies and models in the field.

What happens to children who live on the edge? Children in families that are trying to make it somehow, someway, anyway they can-children with disabilities, who speak other languages, who are told they are different and who know they don't fit? What happens to adolescents who are kicked out of regular high school, who end up under the control of the social welfare system, who belong to gangs, whose friends are killed by gunfire? How can they articulate their own positions and needs? What kinds of literacy do they require so that society will recognize them? Who is their advocate? Because literacy can be used to enable or disable, those children marginalized by society must be literate to survive, and teachers are often their only advocates. But teachers often stand alone when they advocate. For most teachers there are no guidelines available on teaching and advocacy, and we rarely talk about the role that literacy plays in providing opportunities for teachers to work as advocates. Exploring how literacy learning is enabled and disabled offers that opportunity. The teacher-researchers in this book use written texts to uncover the hidden assumptions that shape our perceptions about people's positions in society. They focus on how language is done, what we do with it, how we define ourselves in print, how students are defined-often reinvented-in obscure documents that control their lives. Teaching and Advocacy encourages teachers to stand beside their students, to expose the hidden assumptions in official documents, to develop alternative explanations, and above all, to advocate. Following each chapter, Denny Taylor's interview with the author reveals a rare commitment to children and to advocacy and demonstrates the involvement implicit in qualitative research.

Educational culture continues to languish due to edification's inability to provide student-based technology-enhanced strategies that encourage and nurture students while embracing a student-centric approach to learning. Providing student-based technology-enhanced educational stratagems shows promise as a means to shift educational practices and augment student performance outcomes. Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture intends to provide a compilation of conceptual frameworks, research in the field of educational technologies, available educational technologies, implications for career and leadership, and developmental architectures for pedagogical practices, whether face-to-face, hybrid, or virtual that is evolving educational culture. Combining technology and the creativity of students, providing remote access, and designing curricular presentations that make use of student-centric architectures, may promote enhanced performance outcomes academically as the student enjoys non-stereotypical educational culture. Offering virtual and technology-enhanced educational culture many times tasks students with their own edifying progress. This shift in responsibility nurtures critical thinking and seems to develop intellectual maturity as the student navigates curriculum via technology-enhanced means. Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture reports and proposes alternatives to traditional educational practices, offering stakeholders options for an educational culture not widely present in modern education. By exploring educational technologies and focusing on what works in disseminating curriculum, Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture introduces educators to skill-set opportunities that evolve current educational culture.

Comprised of chapters that make use of clear explanations of the tenets of critical literacy, the context of literacy pedagogy in the US, and classroom examples, this text focuses on what can be learned about the theory of critical literacy from implementation and what practice can learn from theory.