Current Projects

Great Turning

Moffatt, L. Language Arts, Literacy Education and the Great Turning: What Climate Change could Mean for K-12 Education (in preparation)

While it is impossible to anticipate all of the needs of the next generation, current research concerning climate change and the disappearance of readily available fossil fuels suggests that “literacies for sustainability”, or “ecological literacies” may be some of the most essential gifts we could give young people who are destined to enter the school system in the next decade (Hanlon & McCartney, 2008; IPCC, 2018a; Parry, Rosenzweig, Iglesias, Livermore, & Fischer, 2004; Tranter & Sharpe, 2007; WRI, 2005). Understanding how to design ecologically responsive language arts and literacy curricula could be an important step towards providing students with the skills and attitudes they will need to survive and thrive in the coming years. However, few K-12 language arts or literacy education researchers appear to have investigated what climate change or peak oil could mean for our field(s). This paper works to advance K-12 language arts and literacy educators’ and researchers’ understandings of issues of climate change and peak oil so that we might be more equipped to respond to the challenges ahead.

(Dis)Abling Readers

(Dis)abling readers: Discourses of Literacy and Learning in Research on “Reading Disabilities” 2000-2019 (in preparation)

Recent research suggests that the dominance of some ideas of literacy and learning may be linked to the reproduction of social inequality. Ideas of literacy and learning as things that are autonomous from historical/political/social context appear to reinforce the hegemony of some social groups while they marginalize others. Peer reviewed journals continue to have a significant persuasive value when cited by lay people, practitioners or other researchers. However, few studies have examined the ways in which literacy or learning are constructed in the field of Reading Disability research. This paper is an examination of the discourses of literacy and learning that can be found in abstracts of peer reviewed articles concerning “reading disabilities” published between 2000 and 2019.

Sowing Seeds

In 2014, I started a small teacher inquiry group for educators interested in environmental sustainability. This group met once a month for a calendar year. I audio taped our group meetings, transcribed these tapes and analyzed the data using some of the tools of conversation analysis to examine the production of ideologies of curriculum, environmental education and schooling. The first paper to come out of this data is entitled Sowing Seeds: The cultural production of curriculum, environmental education and schooling in a teacher inquiry group. This paper was part of an invited session at the November 2015 American Anthropological Association. The paper is currently under revision.

Below is a CBC radio interview about our group.