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Diversity and equity:

CCCC Black Technical and Professional Communication Position Statement with Resource Guide

• As a coalition of Black scholars, we participated in the Black Technical and Professional Writing Task Force convened by CCCC chair Vershawn Ashanti Young to create a position statement regarding Black technical and professional communication. In addition to fulfilling that charge, we used our agency as scholars in the area to produce the resource list presented here. We composed this position statement and resource list as initial steps toward defining Black technical and professional communication practices and practitioners; advocating for their inclusion in the body of mainstream disciplinary literature; and carving out the methodological, theoretical, and practical space that will enable other Black scholars in the field to see and do such work. The statement and resource list will also assist teachers and researchers of technical and professional communication.

The Role of Literacy Research in Racism and Racial Violence Statement Endorsed by the Literacy Research Association 

• People of color in the United States constitute a large number of these individuals whose experiences have become increasingly oppressed, life threatening and illegitimized (Bashir-Ali, 2006; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Mitchell, 2013). Issues of racism are not peripheral to literacy research, and literacy research need not remain peripheral to issues of racism. The Literacy Research Association resolves that we will not ignore issues of racism and become complicit in the perpetuation of racial inequities, neither in the field nor in the organization itself. 

NCTE Position Paper on the Role of English Teachers in Educating English Language Learners (ELLs)

• This position paper is designed to address the knowledge and practices teachers need in order to create and teach effective curricula and materials that engage English language learners (ELLs), develop their academic proficiency, and help them negotiate their identities as multilingual language users. More specifically, this paper reviews current research into the language and literacy needs of these young people as they participate and learn in English-medium classes. 

Position Statement on Indigenous Peoples and People of Color (IPOC) in English and Language Arts Materials

• Within certain contexts, publishers have been intentionally inclusive with providing and producing various diverse materials and resources with their products and advertisements. Likewise, teachers have created spaces and opportunities for their students to learn from literature and scholarship that highlight the experiences of multiethnic individuals, communities, and organizations. Even with these advances, problems still remain that need to be further explored. This revision outlines existing problems and tensions while offering possible solutions. ​ ​

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Statement on the Opportunity to Learn

• Opportunity-to-learn standards provide a framework that makes it possible for all students to have equitable access to high-quality education. ​ ​

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Expanding Opportunities: Academic Success for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

• Over the past three decades, classroom teachers, literacy researchers, and teacher educators have contributed to an evolving body of literature about high-quality models for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students that places students, their life histories, and cultural ways of knowing at the center of the curriculum. This literature finds an anchor in language, literacy, and social change (Blackburn & Schultz, 2015; Kinloch, Burkhard, & Penn, 2017) multicultural education (Banks, 2014; Sleeter, 2017), culturally responsive/relevant/sustaining pedagogies (Gay, 1990; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2011), critical literacy (hooks, 1994; Kirkland, 2013; Winn, 2011), multicultural children’s literature (DeNicolo & Franquiz, 2006; Haddix & Price-Dennis, 2016; Sims Bishop, 1990); bilingual education (Flores & Rosa, 2015; García, 2008), racial literacy (Wetzel & Rogers, 2006; Sealey-Ruiz, 2011; Skerrett, 2011), linguistics in education (Ball, 2009; Haddix, 2016), digital literacies (Price-Dennis, 2016; Seglem & Garcia, 2015; Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010), and composition and rhetoric (Inoue, 2015; Gilyard, 1999; Royster & Williams, 1999). ​

Statement on Gender and Language

• As both a product and an engine of human culture, language is inherently dynamic and ever-evolving. Regarding the intersection of language, gender, and equity, the English language has been in a period of active shift for several decades. That dynamism is reflected in the evolution of NCTE’s position statements on gender and language through the last forty years.

Doing Social Justice Education: A Practitioner's Guide for Workshops and Structured Conversations
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​Technological and Virtual Interventions

​Removing Labels, Grades K-12: 40 Techniques to Disrupt Negative Expectations About Students and Schools

Writing/ literacy:

Position Statement on the Role of Nonfiction Literature (K–12)

• Contemporary nonfiction for young people plays a crucial role in the reading and writing lives of K–12 students. It is a rich and compelling genre that supports students’ development as critically, visually, and informationally literate 21st-century thinkers and creators. The purpose of this position statement is to propose a paradigm shift for teaching and learning with nonfiction literature in K–12 education.​

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​Position Statement on Writing Instruction in School

Definition of Literacy in a Digital Age

• Literacy has always been a collection of communicative and sociocultural practices shared among communities. As society and technology change, so does literacy. The world demands that a literate person possess and intentionally apply a wide range of skills, competencies, and dispositions. These literacies are interconnected, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with histories, narratives, life possibilities, and social trajectories of all individuals and groups. 

Resolution on Literacy Teaching on Climate Change

• Climate change is not simply a scientific or technological issue, but one with enormous ethical, social, political, and cultural dimensions. Understanding climate change challenges the imagination; addressing climate change demands all the tools of language and communication, including the ability to tell compelling stories about the people and conflicts at the heart of this global discussion.

Beliefs for Integrating Technology into the English Language Arts Classroom

• What it means to communicate, create, and participate in society seems to change constantly as we increasingly rely on computers, smartphones, and the web to do so. Despite this change, the challenge that renews itself — for teachers, teacher educators, and researchers — is to be responsive to such changes in meaningful ways without abandoning the kinds of practices and principles that we as English educators have come to value and know to work.

Parents as Partners in Promoting Writing among Children and Youth

• As educators, we know that a dialogue between parents and teachers is important for children and youth becoming purposeful and skillful writers. The purpose of this position statement is to further that conversation.​

Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents 

• The NRC acknowledges the complexities of reading in relation to writing and oral language in an array of 21st century media environments, of which print is a part. The term adolescent literacy, broader in scope than secondary reading, is also more inclusive of what young people count as texts (e.g., textbooks, digital texts, hypertexts). Many adolescents of the Net Generation find their own reasons for becoming literate—reasons that go beyond reading to acquire school knowledge of academic texts. This is not to say that academic literacy is unimportant; rather, it is to emphasize the need to address the implications of youth’s multiple literacies for classroom instruction. 

Literacy Assessment: Definitions, Principles, and Practices​​

Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing

•  In over a decade since, the everyday experience of writing in people’s lives has expanded dramatically. Increasingly, handheld devices are important instruments for people’s writing, integrated tightly, nearly seamlessly, with their composing in video, photographs, and other media. Geographic location and embodied presence have become more salient to writing than at most times in human history. The ways writing and the spoken voice are mutually supportive in writing processes have become increasingly facilitated by technological capabilities. Globalized economies and relative ease of transportation have continued to bring languages into contact with one another, and US educational scholars and, sometimes, institutions have made progress in considering what it means for individuals to be adding new written languages to existing ones. Even as these expansions have enlarged the experience of writing outside school, implementation of the first USA nationwide standards in literacy—the Common Core State Standards—has, in some places, contributed to narrowing students’ experience of writing inside school. In that contradictory and shifting environment, the NCTE Executive Committee charged a committee to update the Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing, attempting to reflect some of the historically significant changes of recent years. What follows are some of the professional principles that guide effective teaching.

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Statement of Principles and Standards for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing

• For the over 25 million students enrolled in America’s colleges and universities, postsecondary writing instruction is critical for success in college and beyond. In writing courses, students gain experience analyzing expectations for writing held by different audiences and practice meeting those expectations. This experience contributes significantly to the development of productive writing practices and habits of mind that are critical for success in different contexts, including academic, workplace, and community settings.

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Resolution on the Dignity and Education of Immigrant, Undocumented, and Unaccompanied Youth

Writing Assessment: A Position Statement

• Assessments of written literacy should be designed and evaluated by well-informed current or future teachers of the students being assessed, for purposes clearly understood by all the participants; should elicit from student writers a variety of pieces, preferably over a substantial period of time; should encourage and reinforce good teaching practices; and should be solidly grounded in the latest research on language learning as well as accepted best assessment practices.​

Resolution on Professional Learning in the Teaching of Writing for Inservice Teachers​​​​

Critical literacy and writing:

Statement on Academic Freedom (Revised)

• Skilled, academically credentialed English educators earn that trust by striving to prepare all students as literate individuals with requisite dispositions and capacities for open inquiry, critical thinking, and appreciation for diverse thoughts, values, and modes of expression required within a just democracy.

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Resolution on Literacy Teaching on Climate Change

• Climate change is not simply a scientific or technological issue, but one with enormous ethical, social, political, and cultural dimensions. Understanding climate change challenges the imagination; addressing climate change demands all the tools of language and communication, including the ability to tell compelling stories about the people and conflicts at the heart of this global discussion.