Expanding the Discipline of English Language Arts

The goal of this project is to expand the way English Language Arts (ELA) is taught in U.S. high schools. Many ELA teachers want to expand their practice to prepare students for the kinds of literary and language engagement they might encounter in college or in their everyday, out-of-school lives. but they need knowledge, resources, and authority to do so. We want to provide some of those things by doing a content analysis of hundreds of high school ELA course descriptions and comparing those with college English course descriptions, asking:

  • What subjects do those courses explore?
  • What kinds of texts do they invite students to read?
  • What kinds of skills do they demand?
  • What kinds of products do they ask students to create?
  • How do they represent the value of ELA?

Core People