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Purpose – To identify effective literacy instructional strategies and methods based on assessment. Also, to provide information on literacy experts that teachers may seek advice from as they work with striving readers.

Approach – A review of literature and the research on teaching striving readers were examined.

Practical implications – Reading is an important determining factor in efficacious learning and overall literacy; students must possess the necessary literacy skills to become successful and productive citizens in an information age. Throughout the chapter, a striving reader is presented while offering the reader an authentic example of a striving reader. The strategies, methods, and experts offer best practices; these will enhance the student(s) literacy skills.

Originality/value of paper – Educators utilizing the information provided in this chapter will be enhanced in their ability to effectively teach their students.

Purpose – To examine whether or not exposing novice teachers in a graduate literacy education diversity course to particular texts and activities focused on economic diversity and lifestyle differences among students makes them more likely to positively respond to these lesser understood forms of diversity in their own teaching and if so, in what ways.

Design – The research design was qualitative and included written reflections from the teacher-participants at the beginning, middle and end of the semester, and videotaping and transcribing activities and post-activity discussions. Ethnographic observations and notes were made by the primary investigator (PI). The theoretical frameworks that were foundational to the study were critical literacy and teaching for social justice.

Findings – The findings of this qualitative study indicate that exposing teachers to texts, discussions, and activities that educate them on economic diversity and lifestyle differences among students makes them more likely to positively respond to these forms of diversity in their own teaching. Specific examples of how participants did this are provided.

Practical Implications – This study contributes to the literature on diversity in literacy instruction by providing concrete, research-based suggestions for how both teacher educators and K-12 teachers can expand their definitions of student diversity to include economic disparities and lifestyle differences among students. It includes recommended texts and activities for both teacher educators and K-12 teachers to address less typical forms of diversity, with a focus on economic diversity and lifestyle differences.

This paper aims to report on a study investigating how young people and teachers interpreted reading proficiency and difficulty across different tracks of English language arts in the sole high school serving a culturally diverse city.

For six months, the researchers observed in three hierarchically tracked English classes. Participants were three teachers and 15 focal youths. The researchers also conducted semi-structured and open-ended interviews and collected classroom artifacts and students’ records.

Despite adoption of the Common Core State Standards and a school-designed common English curriculum, both of which were to contribute to shared literacy objectives, students and teachers built highly contextualized understandings of reading proficiency, which diverged across tracks and mediated instruction. Across tracks, however, deficit discourses about reading struggle persisted, and students and teachers attributed difficulty to students’ attitudes and behaviors. Young people never described themselves in negative terms, which suggests they resisted the deficit labels tracking systems can generate.

Findings extend research by showing how literacy-related tracking contributed to exclusionary contexts through which students were unproductively positioned at odds. Findings suggest a need for renewed rigor in the examination of tracking practices, particularly how notions of reading difficulty/proficiency position youths and mediate literacy instruction. Despite deficit conceptions of “struggling readers” across the school, youths never described themselves negatively and accepted reading difficulty as normal; how youths achieved such resourceful stances can be further investigated. These research directions will support the creation of English contexts that invite all youths into inquisitive, critical and agentive interactions with texts and each other.

Purpose: To describe how a reading response unit that encourages students to generate their own questions to assigned reading using sequenced instruction can serve as a basis for literary analysis, providing students with a much needed sense of purpose for and authentic engagement with a writing assignment.

Design: Educational reform efforts have focused significant attention on engaging students in assignments, –with the implication that educators connect the purpose and relevance of assignments to the students’ backgrounds and interests. Although educators have typically attempted to forge this connection via the topic or material around which an assignment is centered, the authors argue that purpose, relevance, and engagement are achieved more readily through developing the students’ own thinking about a given topic; their own thinking rather than a given topic, thus becomes the basis for the assignment.

Findings: The authors detail the sequence of instruction they employed to implement a reading response unit in an accelerated sophomore English class, the goal of which was to help students develop a literary analysis essay. The authors discuss how the structure and sequencing of the assignment led to increasing student purpose and engagement.

Practical Implications: Detailing the steps of a reading response unit designed to prepare students for literary analysis based on their own ideas can provide insights to current writing teachers and teacher educators regarding ways in which they can design/modify their assignments to be more purposeful and therefore more engaging for those they teach.

Human libraries are special libraries that give access to real persons known as “human books.” Readers “check out” human books by attending reading sessions organized by the human library. The majority of previous studies focus on reporting the achievement of human libraries, especially on reducing prejudice and promoting social inclusion. There is a dearth of research to investigate how a human library serves and interacts with society. In this regard, this study aims at examining the operation, development, opportunities and challenges of the New Taipei City Human Library (NTCHL), the first and largest human library in Taiwan.

This study adopts a triangulation methodology to collect and analyze a multitude of data. Participatory observation intends to understand the operation of the NTCHL. In-depth interview is conducted to collect the opinions of the staff of the NTCHL to identify the challenges and opportunities of the human library. Content analysis on relevant documents is performed to review the development and performance of the NTCHL.

Results indicate that the NTCHL has successfully developed a good collection of human books. The NTCHL not only provides an alternative channel of learning, but also helps build connections between community members. The number of book loans and readers has substantially increased since NTCHL' inception, indicating an increasing demand for human library services in Taiwan. While the NTCHL strives for providing readers with better and diversified services, the issues of limited involvement and commitment of human books, heavy workload and the difficulty to establish a good collection of human books need to be addressed.

This study investigates a human library in Taiwan, but human libraries in different places are different in some aspects because those human libraries' social contexts are different. Future studies are recommended to compare the similarities and differences between different human libraries systematically. Furthermore, this study identifies the benefits of the human library but human library's effectiveness is not quantified and evaluated. Future studies may conduct quantitative assessments to fill the research gap.

Human libraries must strive for providing better and diversified services to readers, but there are implications for workload and administration. The experience of the NTCHL may cast light on the future development of human libraries in Taiwan and other countries around the world.

This study shows that the NTCHL has brought a couple of benefits to the society of Taiwan. First, the NTCHL provides readers with an alternative experience of reading. This is an effective way to transmit informal or tacit knowledge. Second, building connections between community members was another benefit of the NTCHL. As modern people are becoming more accustomed to virtual life on the internet which suppresses interpersonal communication, the NTCHL represents an effective platform for communication and sharing of interpersonal experiences.

The novelty of this study is the use of triangulation methodology to investigate the operation, development, opportunities and challenges of the first and largest human library in Taiwan. The findings of this study may cast light on the future development of human libraries in Taiwan and other countries.

Purpose – To provide educators with an overview of both generalized and specific comprehension strategies applicable to the content areas.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter is organized by (a) providing a rationale for incorporating reading strategy instruction, especially at the adolescent grade range and above; (b) discussing reading strategies that are appropriate for all content areas; and (c) describing reading strategies that can be used in specific content area subjects.Findings – Research-based strategies for scaffolding comprehension in content area subjects are presented in varying levels of detail.Research limitations/implications – The strategies discussed in this chapter do not constitute an exhaustive list of strategies or approaches to content area literacy instruction.Practical implications – This is a valuable resource for educators to obtain practical guidance in providing content area reading instruction for a wide range of student ages and abilities.Originality/value of chapter – This chapter provides significant research-based information for designing and implementing content area strategy instruction.

Several aspects of the e‐book revolution are reviewed, as well as some related issues confronting libraries. Regardless of format, texts and text‐bearing devices have relationships of mutual dependence, and readers simultaneously experience both. The dominant relationship between texts and text‐bearing devices is shifting from static to dynamic. The e‐book revolution is more about new distribution systems for content, new digital rights management systems, and perhaps an unwitting or inchoate power struggle among the principal interested parties, than it is about the design and diffusion of dedicated reading devices. The e‐book revolution opens up possibilities for new and improved post‐retrieval processing of texts, defined as anything a person can do with a text after it has been retrieved. Librarians need to reassert – especially to the fledgling e‐book industry – the enduring principle of libraries as a social good. The two biggest challenges facing libraries are how to make the transition to an era dominated by dynamic relationships between texts and text‐bearing devices, and how to foster and facilitate robust and complex post‐retrieval processing of texts.

Purpose – This chapter explores how teachers and learners can use technology in powerful and agentive ways for literacy development. It presents information about communication technologies (ICTs) that can be used to develop student literacy skills in each of the major areas of literacy learning: emergent to beginning literacy, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. It also addresses how assistive technologies fit within a literacy development program.

Design/methodology/approach – A brief overview of the breadth of technologies available for instructional uses and the pedagogical perspective used is followed with specific ideas for free or inexpensive technologies that can be used to address literacy development. Additionally, websites for professional reviews of software are included to help readers learn about emerging technologies and software applications as they become available.

Practical implications – Specific ideas for instruction that addresses student literacy development while integrating 21st-century technology are included. Teachers and teacher educators will find immediately useful, practical ideas for boosting literacy learning with technologies matched to specific literacy needs such as sight words, fluency, and comprehension.

Social implications – Struggling readers and writers deserve and need experiences that help them acquire technology skills. Too often these students are excluded from technology activities because they are participating in intervention instruction or do not finish seatwork and have no available “free” or “choice” time. Technology can be a powerfully motivating tool for literacy instruction. It can also provide engaging practice, targeted specifically at the learning needs and developmental stage of the literacy learner. Most importantly, struggling readers and writers need exposure to the academic possibilities of technology.

Chinese internet literature (CIL) platforms afford freedom for creative expression and opportunities for direct interactions between writers and fans and among fans. Enabled by these platforms' technological and commercial arrangement, a new form of literary production and consumption has emerged, the most significant of which is the role of fans participation. A social network analysis of the interaction patterns in online fan communities was conducted to investigate fan communication activities at scale. Of particular interest is how the socio-technical system of the site influences its network topology.

Online forums for 10 popular fiction titles in Qidian, the leading CIL platform, were analyzed. Social networks were constructed based on a post–reply–reply threaded discussion structure. Various aspects of fan interactions were analyzed, including number of replies per post, post length and emerging network patterns.

Similarities in network topology shared by CIL fan forums and other online communities, such as small-world and scale properties, were discovered; however, distinct network dynamics were also identified. Consistent with previous findings, writers and moderators, along with a few highly ranked fans, occupied the central positions in the network. This was due to their social roles and the nature of their posts rather than, as the conventional explanation goes, preferential attachment.

The findings demonstrate how community-specific circumstances and norms influence interaction patterns and the resultant network structure. It was revealed that in the CIL sites, the users adopted the technologies in unexpected ways. And the resulting network topology can be attributed to the interplay between the sites' official arrangement and users' adaptive tactics.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-11-2021-0596.

Purpose – To provide an overview of the development of an integrated classroom curriculum linking literacy, literature, science, and digital technologies designed to develop online literacies with struggling readers from disadvantaged communities.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter opens with a consideration of the theoretical perspectives underpinning the study presented in the chapter. Following this, the methodological and contextual frameworks underpinning the study design are described. Finally, findings from the study are discussed.Findings – The chapter discusses key findings and lessons learned related to the design of an integrated curriculum linking literacy, the content areas, and technology; the development of high levels of online reading comprehension skills with struggling readers; and the crucial role of peer-to-peer collaboration to develop the affective, cognitive, and social aspects of learning online.Research limitations/implications – Findings from the small-scale study indicate the potential of the Internet and other digital technologies to actively engage, motivate, and challenge struggling readers to develop high levels of literacy skills in challenging inquiry-based activities.Practical implications – The chapter provides teachers with practical examples of classroom pedagogies to develop the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully exploit the potential of the Internet and other digital technologies as sites for deep learning.Originality/value of chapter – Teachers are struggling to successfully integrate digital technologies into the classroom curriculum. The chapter provides an insight into the development of an integrated curriculum and the learning environments necessary to develop online skills and strategies in authentic classroom environments.