PurposeGame-based learning can support young children's vocabulary, sequencing and collaborative talk, yet English-medium classroom designs that explicitly introduce early literary metalanguage for children under eight remain under-documented. This study aims to develop and examine Tale Track, a teacher-mediated, game-like tabletop pedagogy designed to promote active participation, create challenge without competition and support story retelling through the selection and manipulation of character and item cards. The intervention uses a two-board structure: an open retelling board followed by a structured board for plot, character and story-message/moral learning. It also aims to support lexical precision, story recall, plot sequencing, character-role understanding and story-message/moral articulation.Design/methodology/approachThe intervention had two stages to engage children with the story and its literary metalanguage. Stage 1 used enlarged picture-book pages and an open retelling board with movable scenes and characters for matching and guided retelling. Stage 2 used a literary-concepts board with sections for plot, character and story-message/moral discussion to support sequencing, role sorting and discussion. An assessment rubric recorded performance at both stages. A pilot case study involved 21 Grade 1 pupils in an English-medium classroom in Salalah, Oman; one did not finish. Evidence included VSI, NSS-EC, PSA, CIS and TCR measures, collected across rolling one-day sessions for analysis.FindingsChildren engaged well with the intervention and completed both stages consistently. In the complete-case subset (n = 20), descriptive results showed relatively strong performance in lexical specificity (VSI M = 1.70 / 2), plot sequencing (PSA M = 10.30 / 12) and character-role identification (CIS M = 4.10 / 5), while story-message/moral articulation was more challenging (TCR M = 1.15 / 2). Exploratory associations among outcomes were uniformly positive, and qualitative evidence pointed to mediated meaning-making within a teacher-guided design. These findings are presented as descriptive and exploratory rather than causal.Originality/valueThe study offers a low-cost, adaptable game prototype for future work that more directly centers child co-construction, critical interpretation and cultural reframing. The study contributes a novel two-board instructional design that integrates guided retelling, categorization, tangible manipulatives and AI-generated visual cards within a teacher-mediated framework. Unlike broader game-based learning research, this paper offers a carefully bounded design case that demonstrates how early narrative understanding, sequencing, lexical specificity and story-message/moral articulation can be scaffolded through a low-cost, contextually adaptable pedagogical prototype.
Purpose This paper aims to reimagine narrative in English language arts (ELA) through tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) by framing them as sites of multimodal, collaborative storyworld construction. It challenges print-based models by showing how narrative emerges through play, tool use and shared authorship. Design/methodology/approach As a conceptual paper, it integrates cultural-historical activity theory and multimodal social semiotics to theorize narrative as an emergent, participatory process shaped by semiotic resources and social interaction. Findings This paper introduces narrative models for solo and multiplayer TTRPGs that account for recursive meaning-making, distributed authorship and the stabilization and revision of shared storyworlds. These models illustrate how semiotic inputs and outputs circulate to generate narrative, offering a new lens for understanding literacy as a process rather than a product. Research limitations/implications Although theoretical in nature, the paper proposes a framework for future empirical work on narrative participation, mediation and power in classroom gaming contexts. Practical implications The framework supports ELA pedagogy that values improvisation, collaboration and multimodal expression. By making narrative architectures (rules, genre defaults and division of labor) visible and revisable, educators can design for disciplinary aims while using student-created artifacts as authentic assessments of understanding. Social implications The framework positions students as recursive co-authors of narrative, enabling them to interrogate dominant story logics and collaboratively imagine more just futures. Originality/value This paper extends narrative theory to analog game spaces and provides original models for understanding storytelling as multimodal and tool-mediated. By advancing a multimodal activity system approach to story construction, it contributes to ongoing conversations about critical gaming literacies, narrative theory and English education.
Purpose This paper aims to develop a conceptual approach to examining digital narrative games by combining concepts from digital narratology and transactional theory. A key bridging concept is interactivity which, in both perspectives, draws attention to moment-to-moment meaning making between the reader (or gamer) and the text (the designed story world of the game). Design/methodology/approach This conceptual approach is applied to exploring an example of extended play in a specific digital narrative game, Stardew Valley. The author, also the gamer, examines evidence from detailed documentation of game play including the design of spaces, evocative objects and interactive characterisation. Multiple avatars (player characters) were created and played to explore the narrative outcomes of different choices made in game play. Findings Stardew Valley's design weaves elements including the overall narrative frame, spaces, objects, player challenges and character interactions to create multiple affordances for storying. Consistent with a transactional theory perspective, the gamer is involved in the dynamic creation of meaning through interacting with these elements in the moment-to-moment process of play. A key feature is the presence of characters who have been provided with back stories and transformative narrative arcs, which become available based on decisions made by the gamer. The opportunity to take divergent narrative paths can sensitise the player to the implied ethical framework of the game world. Originality/value The conceptual originality of this paper lies in combining digital narratology with transactional theory and exploring this approach through an illustrative case study.
Purpose This study aims to examine the application of game-based learning in English language learning and how it mediates social participation, peer collaboration and identity negotiation. It explores how the mechanics of a purposefully developed game, Treasure Hunt, create inclusive and participatory classroom dynamics.Design/methodology/approach A qualitative design was used, and two learning sessions on the same topic were compared: conventional instruction and a game-based learning session on "Direction and Location". Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 40 sixth-grade students at the Indonesian School in Johor Bahru (SIJB), most of whom were children of undocumented migrants, data were collected. Analysis focused on social interaction practices that emerged during gameplay.Findings Treasure Hunt game mechanics, which required interdependence, role distribution and collective decision-making to progress, led to greater collaboration and participation among migrant students. Game-based learning creates a safe space for interactions where students with varied language proficiency contribute in multiple ways. Games disrupt exclusionary spaces and create inclusive spaces, enabling migrant students to negotiate their identities and strengthen them as active members of the learning community.Research limitations/implications This study cannot be broadly generalized because it focused on only one migrant school. Furthermore, the intervention was brief and focused on only one subject and material, so its long-term impact on other language skills and subjects is unknown. Future research could expand to multiple schools, different topics and longer-term interventions to assess the lasting effects of game-based learning.Practical implications A study conducted among migrant communities at the Indonesian SIJB provides empirical evidence that game-based learning can position English learning as a collaborative social practice, rather than simply an individual exercise in linguistic skills. In Treasure Hunt, English is used as a tool for coordination, negotiation of meaning and shared decision-making, thus encouraging functional and contextual language use in peer interactions. For language teachers, these findings emphasize the importance of designing activities that offer diverse forms of participation, so that migrant students with varying language proficiency levels can remain actively engaged. The teacher's role shifts from being the center of content delivery to being a facilitator of interaction, providing scaffolding through clarifying instructions and prompting questions. This approach is relevant for migrant education contexts with limited resources and requiring inclusive and participatory language pedagogical practices.Social implications This study demonstrates that educational games can be a means of social inclusion for migrant students who are often socially and culturally isolated. Treasure Hunt encourages marginalized students to interact across backgrounds, fosters empathy by strengthening solidarity and helps students discover their social identity at school. This evidence has implications for strengthening the social integration of migrant communities in host countries.Originality/value This study contributes to the sociocultural approach to language learning by emphasizing game-based strategies for migrant students. By integrating Critical Gaming Literacies, it demonstrates how games serve as inclusive spaces for identity negotiation and social connection in resource-poor classrooms. The study also highlights insights for designing inclusive, game-based pedagogies in migrant and multilingual educational settings.
PurposeThis paper aims to discover how teachers develop theories of writing through investigating the views of English teachers about writing instruction at the end of their first-third year of teaching in a high school struggling with teacher attrition, limited resources and periodic low academic accountability ratings.Design/methodology/approachThrough qualitative methods of inductive coding and discourse analysis (Gee, 2014), this study queries the ways teachers constructed a theory of writing that leads to an understanding of their role, purpose and identity as writing teachers while facing pressures to increase student scores on state mandated writing exams. Critical sociocultural literacy (Moje and Lewis, 2020), discourses of writing (Ivani & ccaron;, 2004) and writing as liminality (Cosgrove, 2021) theories were used as a framework to guide the analysis of teacher discourse.FindingsFindings revealed teachers had to navigate between multiple tensions in three dimensions undergirding their writing instruction: (1) identity, (2) practice and (3) the professional/instructional environment. These findings point to the importance of teachers interrogating theories of writing pedagogy through moments of uncertainty and potential as they engage in instruction. Additional implications suggest teachers need to develop an understanding of writing pedagogy theory that attends to student skills with writing, curricular mandates and self as writer and writing teacher concomitantly. Teachers need to engage in praxis and explore multifaceted theories about writing pedagogy.Originality/valueThis research addresses a need in the field to understand why writing reform in secondary settings has not taken hold on a wide scale in schools across the USA (Fields, 2020; Graham and Harris, 2019a, 2019b; Lesley et al., 2023; Read and Landon-Hays, 2013). Findings offer insights into reasons for this trend and ways to combat the effects of standardized assessment on teacher writing praxis.
Purpose The insistence of “standardize” or “academic” language in today’s classrooms operates as a site of antiblackness. In schools, many Black students learn that the ways they use language in speaking and writing are not academic and require correction. Knowing the messages that Black students at West, a local high school where the author is professor in residence, receive about their writing, the author was conflicted by the writing instruction that she witnessed and participated in while preparing students to write for the upcoming standardized writing assessment. That being said, the purpose of this paper is to examine the writing ecology at West, what we got right and where we missed the mark. Design/methodology/approach For this qualitative study, the author considers her and other teachers’ approaches to teaching writing, thinking and discussion with Black writers while developing practices and skills to help them write effectively for standardized assessments like the ACT. Findings Findings reveal a writing ecology that simultaneously constrained and supported its students – where Black writers’ metalinguistic sophistication, collective meaning-making and boundary-crossing rhetorical practices constituted rigorous intellectual work the ecology could not recognize or measure. Originality/value Rather than offering Blackademic discourse as an addition to existing academic frameworks, the author argues it is a way of seeing what was always already there.
PurposeThis study aims to examine family video game literacy practices and parental perspectives on incorporating video games into elementary classroom literacy instruction to explore the relationship between children's out-of-school digital literacies and traditional school-based literacy practices.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative case study was conducted with 33 K-5 students and 15 parents from a Midwestern elementary lab school during a unit on video games. Data were collected through student artifacts, parent surveys, interviews and observations. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to identify patterns related to family gaming practices and parental perspectives.FindingsVideo games serve as shared texts between children and family members, creating meaningful intergenerational literacy experiences that bridge home and school contexts. Children positioned themselves as experts during family interactions, disrupting traditional educational power dynamics and demonstrating literacy skills through video game strategy guide creation and gameplay instructions. Parents' perspectives evolved from initial surprise and concern about treating games as texts to recognizing their literacy value and noted increased communication about school activities. Parental support increased when games were framed as legitimate literacy texts within intentional instruction.Originality/valueThis research challenges assumptions about parental resistance to video games in school and contributes to the limited literature on how video games and gaming can function as family literacy practices. The study demonstrates that educators can use video games as effective bridges between home and school literacy practices, contributing to an expanding understanding of what constitutes legitimate family literacy engagement in digital contexts.
PurposeThis paper aims to apply a "revisiting" approach to past game literacy-based research. Starting from a media literacy and videogame making oriented PhD project, it explores how the discussion of past research can be evolved, but also questions what young research subjects gain from participating in research of this nature.Design/methodology/approachWith a frame of longitudinality, this research takes a long view of the experiences of participants from a game making project, against how they consume texts in their lives now. It considers the kind of artefacts (design work, videogames) produced in the original research against a revisiting of some of the student-participants, interrogating their digital media literacy, practices currently, along with discussing their memories of being involved in this research project. With the previous PhD work taking place in the school where the researcher was a teacher, this new research reviews the role creative practice can have in classrooms.FindingsRevisiting the data from past PhD research, which drew positive conclusions about the role game making can have in the teaching of literary texts, and in literacy progression generally, this paper then overlays new interview data from some of the past participants, affirming the power of critical game work in schools.Originality/valueThe combination of a PhD methodology that was itself novel with a revisiting of research subjects in the present offers an original insight into the effectiveness of games-based classroom research over time.
Purpose This study aims to present findings from a design-based research project focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-oriented literacy curricula, with gaming recognized as a legitimate site of learning and expertise. The authors examine how virtual reality (VR) gaming provides youth with unique opportunities for engaging with STEM learning. Design/methodology/approach The authors partnered with a local housing authority to create the Gamers Club. The Club curriculum was structured around phases of game development and professional roles in the gaming industry. It integrated conceptualizations of literacy and intersectional frameworks to support STEM access and STEM identity. Participants included youth of color and represented a diverse set of Latinx, Black and Afro-Caribbean identities, ages 9–11 years. Primary data included lesson slideshows, ethnographic field notes, youth products in process (graphic organizers, digital assets, prototypes), screen recordings (screen casts) of game play and composition processes and their final products. Findings Findings show that participation in the VR Gamers Club enabled youth to engage in STEM and literacy practices through embodied interaction, collaborative problem-solving and design-oriented play. These practices legitimized youths’ existing literacies in support of connected STEM learning in multiple ways. Originality/value Gaming is a powerful site for literacy and STEM learning, creating opportunities that recognize and build on youths’ existing expertise. By legitimizing gaming literacies, the Gamers Club challenges dominant narratives about what counts as valuable knowledge and participation. This approach expands possibilities for more accessible and critical forms of education across STEM, digital and AI-mediated learning environments.
PurposeThis study aims to explore how digital learning design can create relational spaces for Moana students to share knowledge and express identity through (counter) storytelling. The authors report on how a Moana-centred website was used to support students' digital composition of multimodal stories.Design/methodology/approachUsing a design-based research approach, qualitative data were gathered across three phases. Students' insights informed the design and functionality of the website. Their engagement with the site and reflections inform our understanding of their developing educational identities.FindingsFindings highlighted how culturally responsive digital environments with embedded relational principles support identity exploration and meaningful engagement for Moana students.Practical implicationsThis research contributes to the understanding of how digital learning spaces can be designed to support the educational identity development of students.Originality/valueIt demonstrates the application of culturally relevant digital spaces to foster meaningful educational experiences and offer practical insights for educators and designers aiming to create inclusive learning opportunities.
PurposeThis study draws upon a classroom experience within the spring of 2024 anchored in the text, Your Pal Fred (2022) by Michael Rex to explore what happens when teacher educators make pedagogical choices to support students in becoming climate literate future educators.Design/methodology/approachInformed by narrative inquiry, as a way of understanding experience, the analysis is designed through three structured vignettes. Narrative inquiry supports a three-dimensional model and is especially salient for considering spaces such as classrooms that are dynamic and multifaceted. The metaphoric three-dimensional space allowed me to analyze data by looking backward, forward, inward and outward in the temporal dimension (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000).FindingsThe storied classroom experience revealed that building a repertoire of stories set within the speculative landscape such as Your Pal Fred (Rex, 2022) better equips future teachers with the pedagogical tools they need to confront the climate crisis. By replicating this experience, students, teachers, and researchers may find themselves similarly shifted, unsettled, and newly attuned to what it means to live on a changing Earth.Originality/valueBy positioning the speculative landscape of children's literature as a novel pedagogical entry point, this study demonstrates a replicable and generative approach to preparing future educators to engage meaningfully with the growing climate emergency, thereby extending the field of climate literacy in teacher education.
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to demonstrate how picturebooks (and other texts) can serve as invitations to critical conversations about the impact of social class, and race, on young people's experiences inside, and outside of, school spaces.Design/methodology/approachThe authors engage in a critical content analysis of Antwan Eady's Nigel and the Moon focused on the following research question: In what ways are Nigel's senses of self and his futurity shaped by class, race, and space?FindingsThe findings point to 1) the ways in which some children's dreams become "unutterable" due to class, and 2) how spatial conditions (in classroom contexts) can both confirm and disrupt children's class-based realities and their misconceptions about what is (ir)relevant to them. The authors include suggestions for how educators might use Nigel and the Moon to facilitate conversations that will ignite class-, race- and space-based criticality.Originality/valueThis study is one of few that address class (as intersected with race) and its effects on young people's futurities, as depicted in children's literature.
Purpose This paper argues for the integration of critical digital game literacies (CDGLs) into English and literacy education. This study aims to move beyond simplistic good–bad dichotomies surrounding digital games in education by exploring how different theoretical perspectives can inform a more nuanced approach to digital games and school learning. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on Han’s theorisation of the productive relationship between narrative and theory, this paper uses a conceptual analysis approach, synthesising ideas from four key theoretical areas: educational studies, postdigital studies, literacy studies and cultural studies. By critically examining how concepts from these disciplines construct different narratives about digital games and learning, this paper develops an integrated theoretical framework for CDGLs education. Findings Analysis reveals a shared commitment across perspectives: CDGLs cannot be reduced to instrumental competencies but must be understood as complex, socially situated, ideologically laden practices. Educational studies insist that why we teach with games must precede how; postdigital studies demands attention to entangled ecologies in which games operate, resisting technological determinism; literacy studies grounds CDGLs within genealogies of meaning-making across modes and media; and cultural studies refuses essentialist readings, instead foregrounding the productive instability of meaning and young people’s active negotiation of cultural texts. Originality/value This paper offers a novel interdisciplinary framework for conceptualising CDGLs education. By bringing together diverse theoretical perspectives, it provides a comprehensive understanding of how digital games can be critically engaged within English and literacy education, contributing to the evolving discourse on digital literacy practices and schooling.
Purpose This paper aims to examine the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) writing detectors in English language teaching (ELT) contexts and their contradictory impact on pedagogical goals of differentiated, student-centered learning approaches. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses an essay-style approach, drawing on existing literature and documented cases on AI writing detectors. It is organized around three interrelated issues: ineffectiveness, unreliability and harm, with each section defining and exemplifying the concept. Findings AI writing detectors demonstrate significant technical flaws including high false positive rates, bias against non-native English speakers and inability to keep pace with evolving technologies. These tools disproportionately flag authentic writing by multilingual students, creating a chilling effect that paradoxically encourages AI use to avoid false accusations. Reliance on these detectors contradicts essential ELT principles of honoring student voice, promoting linguistic diversity and fostering inclusive learning environments. Originality/value This essay contributes to critical discourse on AI detection in educational contexts by highlighting the inefficacy, unreliability and pedagogical harm caused by surveillance-based assessment approaches. It proposes redefining pedagogical practices in English teaching through introducing critical AI literacy and human-centered assessment practices that prioritize student agency and multilingual expression over technological policing.
Purpose This study aims to respond to the rapid transformation of writing instruction amidst the relentless spread of generative AI tools into our and our students’ everyday lives. The study is aimed at writing teachers of secondary education through college. It offers them a conceptual framework for responsibly integrating AI into their teaching and for simultaneously cultivating a critical AI literacy in their students. Such a critical literacy is designed to enable students to better understand how large language models work, how to use them effectively and selectively and how to critically evaluate the implications of their uses. Design/methodology/approach The study takes the form of a theoretical/conceptual essay, one intentionally broad in scope, written for teachers invested in writing pedagogies across a wide spectrum of educational levels and disciplinary formations. The essay draws primarily on scholarship by experts in composition studies to provide a summative overview of abstract foundational skills integral to process-based writing instruction and the threat AI poses to the continued cultivation of such skills, a conceptual framework for revising pedagogy accordingly and facilitating a critical AI literacy and an extended example of that framework’s potential application within a concrete, specific educational context. Findings The conceptual framework that is constructed here is illustrated through an infographic, one that teachers can use in developing their own critical approaches to writing instruction in the context of generative AI. The framework’s potential is modeled through a discussion of its application within a sample setting – specifically that of writing instruction at the author’s own educational institution. Such a discussion demonstrates that any application of this framework will need to attend to the social, cultural and ideological conditions of each writing teacher’s institutional context, including its particular policies and established procedures and hierarchies. Originality/value The framework proposed is new, particularly in its focus on composition studies’ core transferable skills and their integral relation to process-based writing pedagogies in the context of generative AI.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to narratively present how an English-dominant teacher in a metropolitan Australian secondary school rethought English literacy instruction after English-only practices elicited thin student output in a multilingual classroom.Design/methodology/approachUsing a practitioner-inquiry approach, the article offers a situated, reflective account of everyday classroom practice, reinterpreted through translanguaging theory and contemporary literacy perspectives to examine what becomes visible and what remains partial in English-dominant teaching within multilingual classrooms.FindingsThe narrative traces a shift from treating English literacy as performance in Standard English to understanding it as a multilingual process that culminates in English texts but is built through translanguaging. Redesigned routines (e.g. multilingual planning for English essays, multilingual annotation with brief English distillations and peer feedback in first/additional languages followed by English comments) enhanced students' engagement and the depth of their English output without requiring the teacher to speak their languages.Originality/valueThis paper offers a practice-near account of translanguaging pedagogy in English as a school subject, written from the perspective of a largely monolingual teacher. It shows how teachers can design for translanguaging in mainstream literacy classrooms and challenges the assumption that rigour in English necessarily entails English-only instruction.
PurposeThis paper shares findings from a research project focused on the ways preservice English Language Arts teachers see possibilities for their own future climate literacy pedagogy at the intersection of artifactual writing practices (Pahl and Rowsell, 2010; Author, 2019) and climate education, which we refer to as artifactual climate writing. This paper aims to highlight the ways artifactual climate writing practices shift preservice teachers' beliefs about bringing climate literacy practices to their future classrooms.Design/methodology/approachThis study is qualitative and interpretive (Erickson, 1986). To understand the shifts that teachers' experience through artifactual climate writing, analysis focuses on artifactual climate writing responses and reflections, with a consideration of the ways mediational means impact preservice teachers' experiences in teaching climate writing.FindingsFour interpretations highlight how preservice English Language Arts teachers in methods courses are making space to incorporate climate writing pedagogy through their own artifactual climate writing.Practical implicationsFindings from this study the ways English Language Arts methods courses can support preservice teachers in navigating their implementation of climate writing practices.Originality/valueThis study provides new theoretical and practical practices for English Language Arts methods courses and preservice English Language Arts teachers through artifactual climate writing.
PurposeAs communicative language teaching (CLT) gains global prominence in English language education, this study aims to examine the emotional experiences of rural English teachers in mainland China as they negotiate the demands of CLT.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the concept of emotion labor, the paper explores how these teachers navigate the tensions between CLT as an idealized pedagogical approach and the realities of their marginalized educational contexts. Using a critical narrative ethnographic approach, the study analyzes data from two rural teachers, Ms Ni and Ms Zhe, including emotion diaries, conversations, observations and documents. Data were analyzed through small stories and Gee's discourse analytic framework to uncover the discursive and emotional dimensions of their CLT practices.FindingsThis research reveals how rural teachers' emotion labor arises at the intersection of CLT as a social imaginary and negative image surrounding rural schools, their communities and students. Teachers' adoption of or resistance to, CLT reflects both their professional aspirations and the material-discursive constraints of their working environments.Originality/valueBeyond addressing resource gaps, this study highlights the need to focus on teachers' emotions to help them critically reflect on their emotion labor tied to CLT.
Purpose Students and educators are grappling with socioecological crises that deeply affect their communities and everyday lives. Engaging such issues in the context of English Language Arts is particularly relevant in this moment, but instead, educators are increasingly limited by highly prescribed curriculum, effectually minimizing literacies. The purpose of this paper is to learn how educators are mobilizing literacy pedagogies outside classrooms through place-writing and place-walking as critical and relational pedagogies. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with 17 educators who had participated in a Summer Writing Institute (SWI) at a western Canadian university, designed to engage teacher-writers in/with issues of place, power and pedagogy. With a focus on diffractive methodologies and what data do, the study takes a post-qualitative approach to practitioner inquiry to better understand teachers’ experiences of place-writing and place-walking in practice. Findings The paper moves to offer four propositions and questions: creating strong and confident communities of meaning-makers who know their voices matter and can make a difference; realizing the relational potential of bodies, affect, place and materiality in language, learning and literacies; changing systems, not kids – creating meaningful experiences outside the classroom and in the community; and moving in and out of complex crises and issues relationally, with respect and proper protocols, over time. Originality/value Responsive to calls for more research on learning outdoors with adolescents, the paper highlights middle and high school examples in a Canadian context. Theory and practice are interwoven through socioecological, decolonial and relational lenses – in part, as educators resist, (re)story and re-imagine neoliberal and neoconservative challenges and constraints.
PurposeThis is a transnational research project meant to bring a global lens to literacy teacher education using children's literature as a tool for building climate literacies. The research question that guided this inquiry was: In what ways do encounters among a transnational group of educators with children's books spark dialogue, reflection, inquiry and action into themes of water justice? This study aims to focus on how a transnational collaborative inquiry into water justice through picturebooks emerged and transformed over the course of virtual inquiry sessions.Design/methodology/approachBased on the principles of critical participatory action research design, the project consisted of three virtual sessions with interactive translanguaging read-alouds and spaces for reflection and dialogue among four elementary in-service teachers from Colombia, nine in-service teachers from the USA and a group of teacher educators from both countries. Data sources included artifacts of teacher learning, virtual sessions recordings and materials from teaching, planning and debriefing. Data were analyzed using a critical discourse analysis of bilingual, multimodal, translanguaging transcripts of each session and other data sources.FindingsThis transnational critical inquiry collective project opened spaces for translingual and transnational meaning-making on water justice, extended the teachers' and educators' knowledge about glocal water problems and nurtured social actions to promote water justice across social and geographical contexts.Originality/valueMost studies on climate literacies have examined learning about climate justice within a social context. This study expands this view by generating a translingual space to foster meaning-making on water justice across the Americas.
