The authors offer guidance on recognizing and resisting test‐centric instruction in reading comprehension. They posit that five practices indicate a test‐centric view of comprehension: when the tested content is privileged, when the test becomes the text, when annotation requirements replace strategic thinking, when test items frame how students think, and when item‐level data are overinterpreted. The authors express concern that test‐centric literacy instruction has started to replace research‐based instructional practices more and more. Using a sociocultural lens, the authors describe what young readers are likely to learn (and not learn) about reading comprehension when they are immersed in this form of instruction. The article provides talking points that teachers can use to bolster their efforts to resist test preparation pressures that they may experience in their schools.

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The development of biliteracy among English language learners (ELLs) has been established as a critical issue in education policy and practice. We live in an era of increasing globalization, which results in increased numbers of immigrants in the United States. As a result, significant proportions of students in U.S. schools come from homes where English is not used as the primary language; however, these students, as emergent bilinguals, are required to navigate language and culture in mainstream, English as a Second Language, and bilingual classrooms contexts. This chapter considers the challenges that emergent bilingual students face in elementary school contexts. In addition, specific research-based strategies are outlined for teachers working with ELLs in mainstream, English as a Second Language, or bilingual classrooms. Lastly, the authors explore how multiliteracy approaches and pedagogy might shape ELLs' identity formation.

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This multiple case study is part of a larger investigation of literacy practices in “Our Home,” an after-school program that provides learning support to children from refugee backgrounds. I asked, “What happens when translingual children from refugee backgrounds respond to multicultural, transnational, and translingual picturebooks?” Informed by critical literacy theories, I illuminate the experiences and perspectives of four children as they interacted with and engaged in dialogic reading of picturebooks; these critical literacy practices, along with observational data, are reported in profiles. Findings from this study reveal the ways in which children from refugee backgrounds found problematic aspects of assumptions in stories, reflected on different and contradictory perspectives, articulated the power relationships between characters, and offered alternative thoughts centered on social justice. This research expands the field’s knowledge of what doing critical literacy work with young translingual students in an after-school program looks, feels, and sounds like.