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To explain how reading, rewinding a story in reverse order, and then rereading allows a reader to contextualize information, acquiring not only major themes and events but also details and other literacy characteristics of the literature selection.

A representation of sequencing structures is discussed including world-related, concept-related, inquiry-related, learning-related, and utilization-related. In addition, the instructional design aspects of backwards sequencing are discussed.

Just as a level or stud finder uses a back-and-forth approach for finding the most suitable position, so does the backwards sequential approach to reading comprehension. By slowing down and focusing on parts before the whole, students are more likely comprehend content.

The importance of prediction towards comprehension has been recognized for decades. However, using a learning design that features reading a story once, then revisiting the story structure components in backwards order, and finally reading it again, allows for precise and complete learning. This theory has research and pedagogical implications for students of all ages.

A small private university in rural Indiana has connected itself irrevocably to the protracted Syrian conflict. Through the efforts of committed students, faculty, and community members – stupefied by the endless violence – this cohort of kindred souls has committed itself to creating solace and support for Syrian students, their families, and their countrymen everywhere. Inspired by a story of torture and displacement, a professor, along with her Syrian students and their American allies, have implemented outreach education programs, campus and community initiatives, local business partnerships, and social media support, creating agency for displaced Syrians, not as passive beneficiaries but as co-partners for change and solidarity.

The purpose of this chapter is to outline specific features of the videotaped analysis experience to construct successful video reflection communities.

In this chapter, we draw from our multiple studies of clinic practices, including interviews with lab/clinic graduates, a large-scale survey, and artifact analyses. We also draw from others’ research on videotaped reflection activities.

Our combined research showed three essential aspects of successful video reflection experiences, which we share in this chapter: Developing a culture of video sharing as learning, engaging with collegial feedback, and scaffolding teachers’ individual reflections. In each section of the chapter, we situate, within vignettes of practice, procedures we use to create successful video reflection experiences and prompts we have found effective.

While we highlight three features of successful video reflection experiences based on ours and others’ research, we recognize these are not the only instructional practices that make the video reflection experience beneficial.

In this chapter, we provide instructors specific descriptions of how to arrange successful video reflection experiences, including prompts we have found most successful in generating rich group conversation, coaching, and individual reflection.

The success of video reflection experiences is dependent on how those experiences are framed and situated for teachers. This chapter provides detailed descriptions for teacher educators to use while implementing video reflection experiences.

This chapter explores the complexities of leading the improvement of literacy instruction at a secondary school populated by a majority of culturally diverse, at-risk, and low-income students. The principal's narrative charts the journey to evaluate the campus' comprehensive needs and human capital. In an effort to build teacher capacity and foster authentic learning experiences, the school leader partners with an instructional specialist and a nonprofit organization, WITS Houston (WITS), Houston. The unique professional development program designed by WITS allows teachers to connect directly with writers in order to cultivate their own voices as authors and create more culturally relevant writing instruction for students. After navigating the challenges of program implementation and the COVID-19 pandemic, the campus successfully launches the WITS Collaborative as a multitiered approach to school improvement and literacy intervention. To catalog the experience, the principal details the objectives of the partnership, preparatory considerations, tensions regarding enactment, and the implications for the field.

The first season of HBO's Lovecraft Country is based on Matt Ruff's 2016 novel and explores the horrifying world of H.P. Lovecraft and the very real Jim Crow-era racism that plagued the United States in the 1950s. The series, developed by Misha Green and produced by Jordan Peele, places Black protagonists at the centre of a Lovecraftian horror story. The Black characters have to face shoggoths, grand wizards and magic but they also have to deal with and escape very realistic horror, in the form of racist police violence and white supremacy. By bringing the Black characters into the centre – often the metaphorical villains of Lovecraft's stories – the series allows for a new layer of meaning to Lovecraft's fear of the other. Atticus, Leticia, Uncle George, Hippolyta and the rest of the cast are struggling to escape the everyday real and supernatural manifestations of racism. Their struggle can be seen as a reflection of the actual struggle of the Black communities today, who are trying to liberate themselves from the shackles of oppression and systemic racism once and for all, so all people regardless of the colour of their skin, gender, race and ethnicity can finally be free. Lovecraft Country can be read as a symbolic yet crucial contemporary representation of this struggle for freedom. The series was created before George Floyd's and Breonna Taylor's murders, but it came after the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile and Sandra Bland. Once the viewers search deeper and look past the dark mansions, the wicked wizards and the shoggoth monsters, they can understand that the supernatural and fictional land of Lovecraft Country is not a distant place after all.

Much enthusiasm exists for using video in teacher education and professional development. As this volume attests to, video-based resources are being used in a variety of teacher-learning contexts. Many educators are discussing their use of video; however, a problem receiving less attention is what it takes to design usable video-based curriculum for teacher learning. This chapter addresses a specific problem faced in using video as a tool for teacher professional development. The problem that is often overlooked is that video in of itself is not a curriculum. We cannot consider video a curriculum perhaps anymore than we can consider a whiteboard and markers a curriculum. Video is rather a medium which can be developed into a resource and used in specific ways to enhance learning. Video can become a part of a curriculum for learning if it is designed to be used in intentional ways towards intentional learning goals. The question then is – what does it take to actually assemble a usable video-based curriculum for teacher learning? Answering this question demands consideration of what and how teachers are intended to learn with this curriculum, and what opportunities the medium of video affords.

Virtual reality technologies have given rise to a new breed of space travel, enabling touring of cosmic environments without leaving the Earth. These tours democratize participation in space tourism and expand its itineraries – reproducing while also altering the practices of tourism itself. The chapter explores the ways in which they alter modes of establishing “authentic” tourism destinations and experiences, rendering outer space into a stage for the performance of space travel, while themselves facilitating novel avenues for its social organization and technological assertion. Virtual space tourism not only reflects the progression and metamorphoses in tourist practice and production but also has the potential to influence both the aspirations and prospects of our space futures.

Learner control is a widely touted and popular element of e-learning, both in the educational and organizational training domains. In this chapter, we explore the concept of learner control, highlighting its multidimensional and psychological nature. We examine the theoretical basis for the effects of learner control on learning and engagement. Next, we provide the reader with empirically based recommendations for designing learner-controlled training. We conclude by discussing how learner control research may be adapted to accommodate a variety of instructional methods, such as textbooks, mobile learning, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).