Explore the vast range of titles available.

Literacy educators can guide students to examine the stories we live by, or the larger narratives that guide individual and collective sensemaking about relationships between humans and the environment. Drawing from the field of ecolinguistics, the authors consider two ecologically destructive stories we live by: Humans are the center of existence, and consumerism is a main pathway to happiness and fulfillment. The authors also explore three intersecting beneficial stories we live by that center on indigenous perspectives, feminist foundations of climate justice, and youth activism. This work is rooted in three essential understandings about climate change: It is a complex socioscientific topic and escalating problem, engaging with climate change is mediated primarily by a complicated array of motivated digital texts and motivated readers, and climate change is about climate (in)justice. The authors conclude with ideas about being a climate justice literacy educator.

In this commentary, the authors move beyond digital literacy and take up the question of what digital citizenship means and looks like in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic. To engage with questions of ethical practice, the authors begin with the International Society for Technology in Education framework for digital citizenship. They expand on these standards to argue for an awareness of the ethical questions facing citizens online that are difficult to encompass as a set of skills or competencies. The authors then take these considerations into a set of practical steps for teachers to nurture participatory and social justice–oriented digital citizenship as part of the curriculum. The authors conclude by noting the digital divide and social inequities that have been highlighted by the current crisis.

Decades of research offer important understandings about the nature of comprehension and its development. Drawing on both classic and contemporary research, in this article, we identify some key understandings about reading comprehension processes and instruction, including these: Comprehension instruction should begin early, teaching word-reading and bridging skills (including graphophonological semantic cognitive flexibility, morphological awareness, and reading fluency) supports reading comprehension development, reading comprehension is not automatic even when fluency is strong, teaching text structures and features fosters reading comprehension development, comprehension processes vary by what and why we are reading, comprehension strategy instruction improves comprehension, vocabulary and knowledge building support reading comprehension development, supporting engagement with text (volume reading, discussion and analysis of text, and writing) fosters comprehension development, and instructional practices that kindle reading motivation improve comprehension. We present a visual depiction of this model, emphasizing the layered nature of impactful comprehension instruction.

There is far more to the digital divide than meets the eye. In this article, the authors consolidate existing research on the digital divide to offer some tangible ways for educators to bridge the gap between the haves and have‐nots, or the cans and cannots. Drawing on Aldous Huxley's notion of a “brave new world,” some digital divide approaches and frameworks require debunking and are strongly associated with first‐world nations that fail to account for the differential access to technologies that people who live in poverty have. Taking a closer look at current realities, the authors send out a call to teachers, administrators, and researchers to think more seriously and consequentially about the effect the widespread adoption of technologies has had on younger generations and the role of the digital on knowledge creation and on imagined futures.

The ability to analyze and evaluate online sources for credibility continues to be a universal concern. In a 2006 study by the University of Connecticut, seventh graders lacked the ability to discredit a hoax website about a tree octopus. Using the same website in this qualitative study, 68 elementary students shared rationales about the source's authenticity during an exploration of reliability reasoning. Student responses provided insight into the application of web literacy skills and highlighted a need for increased instructional emphasis on critical thinking and explicit modeling of reliability reasoning during online searches.

This study uses photovoice to examine the ways in which Chicanx youths hone their critical and multimodal literacy skills in a secondary ethnic studies course. While the institutionalization of secondary ethnic studies courses swiftly expands in school districts across the United States, more research is necessary to understand the nature of these courses. This inquiry examines student photovoice compositions, participant observations, and in‐depth semistructured interviews to ascertain some of the affordances of an ethnic studies course from the perspectives of participating students. The following question guides this paper: How do students articulate the importance of ethnic studies in their lives? Students’ creations of photovoice compositions allowed them to communicate ideas around ethnic studies in authentic ways that valued their cultural practices and resources. Findings highlight student literacies of social action across three domains: individual, community, and structural.

This department explores critical perspectives on issues at the intersection of policy and practice in order to generate fresh questions about enduring dilemmas, new challenges, and debates.

Political memes are argumentative visual texts commonly encountered on social media. Through the strategic combination of imagery and captions, a political meme presents information as fact about a topic, an individual, or a specific group. The power of political memes can be attributed to their viral nature and their effects on public discourse and perceptions. To critically read a political meme, students must be equipped with critical media literacy skills. This article describes how action researchers engaged 56 middle school students in the rhetorical analysis of political memes with the goal of supporting critical media literacy skills through practical application. The two-week study took place in the Southeastern United States at a rural school. Students determined that the political memes created false binaries, appealed to group identities, drew on macro and micro sociopolitical contexts, and used strategic visual arrangements to form an argument. Critical media literacy is imperative given the prevalent and viral nature of media and its effects on people and public policy.

This department explores critical perspectives on issues at the intersection of policy and practice in order to generate fresh questions about enduring dilemmas, new challenges, and debates.

This forum focuses on the intersections of texts and identities with the aim of selecting and mediating texts that readers and writers find valuable within and outside of formal educational settings.