The authors closely analyzed 45 children's books featuring characters with refugee backgrounds that had been published since 2013. With the concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy underpinning the review, analysis revealed that these texts are rich and detailed, providing a starting point for discussing the global refugee crisis with students, but they occasionally fall short in providing complex, multidimensional representations of characters’ lives and experiences. A majority of the texts analyzed focus on the journey in search of a safe place to live, whereas very few focus on the complexity of making a life in a new place. The findings highlight the importance of identifying texts that provide complexity, dimension, and specificity in depicting experiences of refugee‐background characters across settings. Opening classrooms to texts about the diversity of refugee experiences invites teachers and their students to critically explore the important global issues of migration, equity, and ways of being human.

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Text‐related oral participation is ubiquitous in literacy and language instruction. As such, considering how invitations to these interactions are framed is critical, as this framing is directly implicated in the design of equitable classrooms. In this Teaching Tip, one common technique teachers have been encouraged to use—a class set of “equity sticks”—is reconsidered through the lens of asset‐based instruction for all learners including emergent bilinguals (EBs). Reframing how EBs are invited to respond to texts requires that teachers get to know their students, privilege multilingualism, provide scaffolding for oral discussion, and encourage responses that transcend linguistic modalities.

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Purpose While conceived to examine key factors affecting post-retirement career advancement of retired elite athletes in South Korea, the purpose of this paper is to report how English, as a de facto global lingua franca, functions as a powerful gatekeeper in the sports administration field. Design/methodology/approach Interpreted through the lens of Bourdieu’s linguistic capital and Gramsci’s hegemony of language, the present study draws on content analysis of semi-structured individual interviews, as well as focus group interviews, conducted with thirty former South Korean elite athletes. Findings Based on the data analysis, systematic bias toward athletes was uncovered, privileging English as the single determining factor for employment. Furthermore, the educational implications for adult learners of English as a Foreign or English an Additional Language reveal unrealistic expectations of top–down language policies. Originality/value Perspectives of athlete participants, an underrepresented group in educational research, within the South Korean globalization context shed critical light on the pervasive aspects of English hegemony and its unexamined dimensions.