Despite the ruling of Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, segregation in schools is still quite visible with suburban schools educating a student body of more than 70% White and urban schools comprised of mostly Black, Hispanic, and Asian students. Ideally, a school should dispel social and structural inequities through curriculum and quality resources, but fallibly, schools continue to be the vehicles to maintaining the status quo. Students who develop critical awareness and cultivate a critical literacy stance can become agents of change toward a more democratic society. In the current study, urban upper-elementary-age students were asked to engage in a critical literacy event by critically examining the power positions of characters in books that depict historical social injustice. The six female participants met in several sessions to read books and a newspaper article, use a critical reader response tool, and then engage in critical conversations about the books' characters. Their dialogue was recorded and analyzed using a critical discourse qualitative methodology. The findings show that older elementary students are capable of seeing multiple perspectives of an issue and can explain characters' power from born from privilege and fueled by fear and how a shift in power may occur through solidarity. The findings suggest school curriculum enhanced by media narrows the students' view of discrimination as being targeted mostly towards African-Americans, but those experiences through literature have the potential to expand the students' views to include other cultural groups. Subsequently, there is a need for broader teacher preparation using books that enhance students' views of social injustice.

The current study aims to explore how PMI instruction and other psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic factors that might affect the production of Mandarin consonants by Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. A total of 63 participants were invited to participate in a Mandarin consonant production test in which they had to pronounce words starting with these three pairs of Mandarin consonants /ts/-/tʂ/, /tsh /-/tʂh / and /s/-/ʂ/. 6 participants were invited to a post-experiment interview. Results of the Mandarin production tests showed that secondary school students who had completed PMI instruction had the highest Mandarin production score. However, no significance could be found between the use of PMI instruction and the production of Mandarin consonants by Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. Results of the interview showed that age, length of exposure to Mandarin, instrumental motivation were the factors that led to a higher accuracy in Mandarin production whilst a lack of motivation, low social acceptance towards Mandarin, high social distance towards mainland China and political factors are the factors that led to a lower accuracy in Mandarin production. To improve Cantonese speakers' Mandarin consonant production accuracy, the government should introduce Mandarin to the curriculum starting from kindergartens and improve the image of Mandarin among Hong Kong people.

Disciplinary literacy is an approach to literacy in the content areas that helps students develop thinking and literacy skills that mimic experts in the field. The goal of this study was to explore the instructional practices of history teachers who have been nominated as exemplary and the role of disciplinary literacy in their instructional practices. Exemplary teachers were defined as those with strong content knowledge, experience teaching, and recognition for their teaching. This study used a qualitative multiple-case study research design. Data collection included interviews and classroom observations with nine participants across four school districts. Thematic data analysis was used as the method of analyzing data. In the cross-case synthesis portion of analysis, one of the strongest beliefs expressed by the participants was that teachers need to work to make history relevant for students. The observed teaching practices of exemplary teachers showed that exemplary teachers create strong classroom communities that focus on inquiry, discussion, and student-led learning opportunities. The findings from this study suggest that teachers need to have strong content knowledge (an in-depth knowledge of historical events) and discipline knowledge (understanding of how historians read, write, think, and discuss in their field) in order to build the pedagogical content knowledge (understanding of how to facilitate student growth in both content knowledge and discipline knowledge) needed to be able to facilitate a student-led classroom that engages in inquiry and disciplinary literacy skills.

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The purpose of this study was to determine if an autistic child who had been nonverbal, and who had a history of failure to make auditory discriminations, would rely on visual cues rather than auditory cues in making speech discriminations. It was hypothesized that she would learn to articulate more correctly those words presented with concomitant visual cues than the ones with visual cues absent.

The purpose of this qualitative inquiry is to explore critical visual literacy in a first grade classroom at a private school. This case study design focuses on students learning how to take a critical stance by focusing on the visual images, children's picture books, and visual arts masterpieces. The research question guiding this study is: How does a visual literacy approach using inferential and critical questioning support first graders' development of critical literacy? Four social issue topics were discussed which were exploring difference, bullying, poverty and global issues. The students engaged in conversations on each topic that were prompted by a specific set of questions to invite a critical stance. This study encouraged multimodality as it opened up a space to make thought visible in ways that go beyond printed words. The students were able to demonstrate their thinking and understanding by sharing their voice on the various topics through writing, art, music or acting. The inclusion of art was a valuable tool for building a deep understanding of self and others. Findings from this study support the development of social empathy in students and can be linked to morality theory and moral education. The study points to the significance of visual images and art in the development of agency in students while also initiating a change in how students approach all texts. Additionally, this study supports the use of inference as a tool for critical literacy with visual images. This approach to the curriculum encouraged students to become critically aware of the messages in their everyday worlds. The goal was for the students to develop a confident voice that can speak back to a text.

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