A personal journey to merge literacy education and multicultural teacher education

There has been considerable attention to multicultural education and how to effectively integrate it into teacher education programs so that it helps teachers to be attentive to and effective for the economically, culturally, and racially diverse student populace. This article will focus on my personal journey with multicultural teacher education and literacy education. There will be a discussion of multicultural or diverse-oriented teacher education with a focus on the challenges as well as the potentials that face these teacher preparation programs. In addition, there will be a discussion of current educational trends in schools as evidence that demands the need for stronger multicultural teacher education programs. Finally, an existing teacher education program will be presented that has an emphasis on multicultural teacher training, as well as suggest approaches for building a research-based multicultural teacher education program

Preserving Adolescent Readership through Interest and Motivation

Adolescent literacy has remained a relatively hot topic for several years in the field of reading education (Cassidy, Ortlieb, & Shettel, 2010/2011) however, educators remain conflicted about how to maintain high levels of reading motivation. A historical analysis of adolescent interests and motivations was conducted to determine what instructional techniques have had positive effects so as to meet the imminent needs of adolescent readers. Findings include information pertaining to: choice of a multitude of reading materials, substantial time to experience aesthetic and engaging reading experiences, and a relevant, challenging curriculum that addresses student needs, personal interests, and motivations

Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions about the Effectiveness of the TOON Comic Books in Their Guided Reading Instruction

Recently, education and literacy researchers have acknowledged educational merit in guided reading that incorporates interactive and authentic reading texts, such as graphic novels, which meet the needs of today’s predominantly multimodal learners (Jennings, Rule, & Zanden, 2014; Kist & Pytash, 2015). This qualitative study explores through interviews and a questionnaire the perceptions of pre-service teachers about the effectiveness of the comic book series known as TOON comics in guided reading with struggling readers and writers, from kindergarten through fifth grade. Pre-service teachers have expressed positive views concerning the use of these comic books in guided reading instruction with their struggling readers and writers. They plan to use this comic book series in the classroom in the future and they offer suggestions for addressing the challenges this genre may bring to their students

Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspectives on How the Use of TOON Comic Books during Guided Reading Influenced Learning by Struggling Readers

The study presented in this article examines the use of comic books, specifically the TOON comic books during guided reading instruction. The instruction was provided to struggling readers by the Literacy Center at a comprehensive university in southeastern United States. What most pre-service teachers in this study agreed upon was that comic books served as an effective tool for getting their students interested in reading. Reading comic books with tutors as partners in conversation with the struggling readers in this study was also a powerful medium for facilitating students’ literacy skills development, particularly in the areas of reading fluency and reading comprehension. Contrary to common misconceptions that reading visual literacy, including comic books and graphic novels, is a simple process (Mortimore, 2009), the pre-service teachers found out firsthand that it actually is a complex process. Nonetheless, the challenges they encountered with incorporating comic books in the classroom did not prevent these pre-service teachers from appreciating their educational merit

Librarian-Faculty Collaboration for Literacy Courses: Promoting Better Learning for Preservice Teachers

This narrative describes a collaboration between three university literacy faculty and a subject librarian undertaken to embed library instruction across the semester in three required courses--children’s literature, early literacy, and disciplinary literacy--in order to help undergraduate preservice teachers better understand and incorporate children’s literature and high interest literature into their teaching. Concrete, scaffolded, hands-on experiences for preservice teachers with teaching materials helped to build awareness of foundational concepts in literacy instruction. Librarian/faculty collaborations have the potential to improve literacy teacher preparation programs by providing designed opportunities for active, concrete engagement coupled with structured reflection