James R. King

University of South Florida | USF · Teaching and Learning - Literacy Studies

Shared understanding of what words mean is critical for understanding and having meaningful discussion within professional circles and between the profession and the public. For over six decades, the term reading wars has been used in scholarship and popular media to describe debates about how to teach reading. In this article, the authors report f...

“College reading” is applied on two parallel levels: a description of a professional field, and a descriptor for academic literacy expectations and demands required throughout the postsecondary experience. The field has a long history, from the roots of higher education in the US, when college admission was considered proof of students' literacy. I...

Research into discourse synthesis examines the ways in which writers make use of, and transform, multiple other texts in writing their own. It is intertextual research that has blurred boundaries of various kinds, not only the boundary between the processes of reading and writing but also boundaries across disciplines as well as regions of the worl...

Literacy educators enrich their professional toolkits with a historical understanding of the field. In our argument for the need for an increased focus on history in the preparation of literacy educators, we look, perhaps unsurprisingly, back into history.

A member of the literacy professoriate, it is expected, has undertaken a program of preparation that leads to a breadth and depth of professional knowledge supporting a career of impactful scholarship along with the training of future generations of literacy teachers, specialists, and often professors. Yet, while current members of the literacy pro...

In this current era of policy and legislation driving curriculum and instruction in higher education, the field of college reading is grappling with how recent curricular mandates affect learners, particularly mandates that reduce or eliminate college reading instruction by assuming a one-size-fits-all approach. Questioning the ethical implications...

Objective/Research Question Surprisingly, little research explores the literacy practices specific to career technical education (CTE) courses at the postsecondary level, yet the number of students coming to college needing literacy support continues to increase. There is a need for focused research on what constitutes college-readiness. The study...

This article covers the role of trustworthiness in qualitative research particularly as applies to developmental education, learning assistance, and student success programing in postsecondary education.

The purpose of this article is to isolate and detail various literacies deployed by youth when they composed multimodal texts that culminated in the production of student films. In particular, we focus on manifestations of young people’s thinking in the forms of fast and slow literacies. Using data from a series of research studies in which we obse...

Information is provided to guide individuals in their use of observation as a teaching and research tool in postsecondary classrooms and with academic services. We define what is meant by observation, and we then present guidelines based on best practices in qualitative research.

This article presents a study that was undertaken at three community colleges. The study was designed to build upon prior research that aimed to answer the following question: What constitutes college-level-text readiness in general education courses? This study directly focused on answering the question in Career Technical Education programs via a...

This column discusses the role of action research for professionals, graduate students, and researchers in postsecondary education specializations focused on student success. Furthermore, it serves as a useful primer for any practitioner desiring to undertake an action research project.

Design based research has the potential to promote impactful reform and/or innovation. This foundational discussion serves as an introduction to design based research covering its uses and purpose as well as its potential for building teams of practitioners and researchers so as to ask and answer important real world questions.

This methodological review highlights the trends in empirical studies where a methodological construct (i.e. verbal reports) intersects with content (i.e. literacy research). Specifically, we synthesise research on language learners’ reading in which verbal reports were deployed as a methodological tool. Questioning the long‐standing assumption tha...

This guide accompanies the following article: Smith, P., Kim, D., Vorobel, O. & King, J. R. Verbal reports in the reading processes of language learners: A methodological review, Review of Education, https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3170

This methodological review highlights trends in empirical studies where a methodological construct (i.e., verbal reports) intersects with content (i.e., literacy research). Specifically, we synthesize research on language learners' reading in which verbal reports were deployed as a methodological tool. Questioning the long-standing assumption that...

The theory of peer effect posits that students who find themselves in the company of high or low performing peers tend to exhibit better academic performance than what is solely attributable to their own individual characteristics. In this study, we investigate peer effects within literacy achievement among Trinidadian and Tobagonian youth, using a...

Qualitative and quantitative research studies have generated impactful findings. Yet there are underutilized research methods that can answer a myriad of research and evaluation questions from new vantage points. It is the purpose of this discussion to provide foundational knowledge of mixed methods approaches so as to encourage their use by teams...

We examined how infusing an inquiry-based Disciplinary Literacy Project (DLP) into a graduate literacy education class influenced elementary teachers’ knowledge about disciplinary literacies and how this knowledge influenced their instructional practices. Through the DLP, teachers in this study developed an awareness of the nuances of the literate...

This chapter contains an updated review of the historically oriented texts on the postsecondary college and study strategy field.

This white paper presents an overview of qualitative research that provides a fundamental knowledge of the methods of inquiry, the approaches to data collection, and the ethics associated with using qualitative and/or conducting qualitative research. Overviews of methods include Narrative, Phenomenology, Grounded Theory, Ethnography, Case Study, Au...

The purpose of this essay is to examine the relationships between “the oral” and “the written” in a particular application of narrative research (life rendering research). First, we examine a functional and valuing contrast between oral and written language within oral history methods. Second, we present a critical examination of the use of these l...

The Handbook of Research on Cross-Cultural Approaches to Language and Literacy Development provides vivid descriptions of cross-cultural approaches to language and literacy across the local contexts of home, school and community, and across broader transnational, international and globalized contexts. Our volume addresses the literacy needs of cult...

This study explores how teaching cases that featured diversity and literacy issues and self-reflexive writing exercises called postcard narratives can be used as tools by teacher educators for developing a culturally responsive pedagogy with preservice teachers. This study used interviews with the professor, a journal kept by the professor, a resea...

In educational contexts, codeswitching (CS) is deployed in a binary fashion. Either CS is a productive strategy (a translanguaging, revisionists' claim), or CS is a "bad habit" signaling linguistic deficits. Some of the variance in understanding CS results from specific contexts. When a second language is used in a content classroom, the productive...

This paper offers a linguistic background on what codeswitching (CS) is, as well as comparative models of accounting for it. The linguistic and sociolinguistic accounts are followed by a synthesis of the existing research on educational uses of CS, in both foreign language (FL), second language learning, and multilingual content area classrooms. Fi...

In this article, the authors update key constructs in the area of ethics within qualitative research in literacy. Issues such as newer interpretive theory, media incursion into data security, and newer expectations for privacy problematize what were once taken-for-granted assumptions about the ethical conduct of qualitative inquiry as it is now pra...

In this paper, we concentrate on veridicality within verbal protocols when they are used to examine the reading processes of language learners (LLs). Eight methodological recommendations and considerations for verbal protocols proposed in Ericsson and Simon (1984; 1993) are used to review 20 LL reading research studies that utilized verbal protocol...

In this chapter, the authors describe four adolescent students' participation in a digital video summer camp. They describe the students' acquisition of moving-image composition strategies and how these processes are connected to acquiring new vocabulary. The authors examine the camp practices through a lens of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (...

Propositional analysis of text, including the generation of proposition density ratios, is examined within the context of Alzheimer's research. A discussion of linguistic modularity raises questions regarding the outcomes of propositional analysis and its applications in Alzheimer's research.

This study of a literacy course begins with methodological approaches useful in the historical study of the literacy profession, its practices, beliefs, and participants. A model course is presented via “moments” in the history of literacy. Results from implementations of the model course are also presented.

During a teaching methods field experience, we initiated several processes to facilitate pre-service teachers’ reflection, empowerment, and performance as they learned to teach students. Through an ethno-theater presentation and subsequent revisions to an ethno-theater script, we turned the reflective lens on ourselves as we discovered instances of...

This study examined the effects of a computer-based early reading program (Headsprout Early Reading) on the oral language and early reading skills of at-risk preschool children. In a pretest–posttest control group design, 62 children were randomly assigned to receive supplemental instruction with Headsprout Early Reading (experimental group) or Mil...

IN THE MIDDLE: WRITING, READING, AND LEARNING WITH ADOLESCENTS, By Nanci Atwell, Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton-Cook, 1987 WHEN WRITERS READ, By Jane Hansen, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1987 CULTURAL LITERACY: WHAT EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO KNOW, By E.D. Hirsch, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987 READING INSTRUCTION FOR THE GIFTED, By Donald C. Cushenbery,...

The study took place at a Catholic PreK-8 school/parish where two faculty instructors taught undergraduate methods courses. At the parish site, the pre-service teachers worked with elementary students to create a range of multi-media projects. These projects showcased the oral histories of the people, places, and events of the school and church com...

Research has called for courses to be developed that provide preservice teachers opportunities to actively engage their pedagogies under construction in order to effectively translate their beliefs into sound instructional practice. This article presents research that examined how a service-learning writing tutoring program affected preservice teac...

How does service learning impact content acquisition? Undergraduate pre-service teachers participating in a literacy tutoring service-learning experience are compared with pre-service teachers engaged in self-selected and independently directed tutoring sessions. The findings of this study support previous assertions that service-learning positivel...

In this chapter, we define and explain critical literacy by providing an analysis of the term “critical literacy” and the way that term is used in the professional literature in reference to adolescents. We report on the ways that the term is used differently for different audiences and the variations in the use of the term “critical literacy.” We...

Interactive fiction has great potential for use in schools, providing engaging and empowering opportunities for learning and literacy. Experiences with interactive fiction provide two key components lacking in contemporary storytelling mediums: autonomy (the ability to act and change on its own) and interactivity (or the ability to think and react...

The Early Childhood profession would benefit from a systematic inquiry into “calendar math”. The authors offer an organized framework for this work. After a description of calendar math practices, the authors examine problematic aspects of its implementation, based on developmental theory. The essay concludes with a call for more reflective teachin...

Those who teach, or intend to teach, young children undergo careful scrutiny as to their suitability for the role of teacher. In general, professional monitoring of teaching standards and teacher qualities are reasonable expectations. However, a set of related cultural practices embedded in such monitoring purposefully and unjustly impact men who w...

Early literacy interventions have been critiqued for their propensity to remove “reading problems” from classroom teachers’ responsibility. In the current study, classroom teachers were trained so that they could provide specialized early intervention lessons to at‐risk students in their own classes. The results of the project compare favorably wit...

Over the last 2 years, Accelerated Literacy Learning (ALL) has experimented with the small group model in early literacy intervention, with success comparable to that in one-to-one intervention. There can be little doubt that intervention provided to struggling readers is most effectively initiated at an early stage. The ALL program was conceived o...

Presentation et commentaire de deux ouvrages qui traitent des contextes educationnels a partir d'une demarche ethnographique : Cooperative learning in context: An educational innovation in everyday classrooms (Evelyn Jacob, 1999) ; et Particularities: Collected essays on ethnography and education (George W. Noblit, 1999). Mettant en perspective la...

The legacy of reading theorists, researchers, and educators should be preserved through recollections, memories, or life stories from oral history projects. This article covers how state associations can design and undertake such projects.

In this essay, I examine the act of identity assumption by researchers for the effects on their interpretations of data. This examination is itself made more complex by the inclusion of a researcher agenda necessary for critical ethnography and by the insertion of a queer standpoint that renders that researcher agenda queer. After presenting an exa...

The Accelerated Literacy Learning (A.L.L.) program, an early intervention program for at‐risk learners, has been effective for a majority of the children involved. Not all children, however, have benefited from this one‐on‐one program. Case study research was conducted to illuminate various rates of progress between students who began the school ye...

Valid college reading and study strategies have become lost, altered, or copied as trends in research and practice have changed with time. Useful knowledge from the past can be important as the field continues to change.

When children experience difficulty in forming language experience stories, teachers have two options. They can either accept immature, ill‐structured utterances or change students' dictation to “school” language. By changing utterances, teachers can create a temporary linguistic scaffold. However, by creating this scaffold, teachers may be denying...

Interesting perspectives emerge when teachers interview other teachers about their shared profession. The narratives reveal common themes. Interviewed subjects are cast as heroes born to the task, subjected to trials, and strengthened through their tolerance and balance. In this study, a model is offered for a student centered workshop approach to...

This article presents a four-stage instructional sequence of modeling, practicing, evaluation, and reinforcing activities for developing student-directed notetaking strategies. Although each stage is described in detail, we pay particular attention to evaluation and reinforcing. This emphasis allows the introduction of NOTES (the Notetaking Observa...

The effects of student-generated prequestions and summaries were compared as reading study strategies for college-age subjects. Eighty-seven freshmen and sophomores from several sections of a developmental reading course were trained to use one of two study approaches: (a) phrasing and answering higher level questions while reading or (b) construct...

Describes a course for college freshman that integrates orientation and study skills by focusing on notetaking, a reading–study approach, "testwiseness," vocabulary development, and reading-rate work. An attempt is made to teach these skills in a way that also immerses the student in the university milieu and surroundings of the campus community. P...

Prereading first graders were trained in a group of six sight words drawn from superordinate, basic, and subordinate levels of categorization as well as from a list of frequency control words. After teaching the selected to the students following an interference task, the students were posttested for immediate recall of the previously learned words...

The basic function of the drivers' manual is to prepare the license applicant for the drivers' examination and to give licensed drivers a source of reference for driving information. In contrast to studies that analyze what information should be included in these booklets, this article reports on recent research to determine the readability levels...

Typescript. Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 1980. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-135).

Typescript (photocopy). Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Arlington, 1988. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-224).