Brady Nash

This multi-institutional, collaborative self-study explores how teacher educators learn to embed new literacies (NL) in teacher education coursework. Utilizing collaborative self-study methodology, seven faculty engaged in a year-long collaborative study focused on the incorporation of NL in preservice teacher education courses, meeting regularly over the course of the year to share reflections, provide feedback to one another, and continually revise course and assignment designs related to NL. Data sources included recordings of collaborative planning meetings, written reflections, annotated teaching artifacts, notes and transcripts from partner and whole group recorded Zoom sessions and post-meeting reflections. The findings describe diversity in both conceptualizing and teaching NL, parallels between teacher educators’, preservice teachers’ and P-12 teachers’ challenges integrating NL into their teaching, and institutional barriers to collaborative study, curricular revision, and the use of new technologies. The authors discuss these findings in relation to the potential value of multi-institutional study groups and collaborative self-study as a methodology for helping support literacy teacher educators’ ongoing learning.

Scholars in recent years have explored the connections between video games, literacy, and learning. Research illustrates that video games can serve as texts for engagement and analysis in English language arts classrooms. Scholars have also demonstrated how games themselves effectively integrate a complex array of learning principles that help players understand and progress in the game. In this article, we explore how recent efforts in game design to promote accessibility for differently abled gamers have implications for literacy education that can promote inclusivity and equity in English language arts classrooms. While recognizing the social construction of the concept of (dis)abilities, we explore existing literature on the video games, literacy, accessibility, and universal design for learning. We then demonstrate specific ways that video game designers promote visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive accessibility for gamers and share how literacy educators can draw upon these strategies to promote accessibility in their curriculum and instruction to help all students engage, learn, and thrive.