20 Research Articles for 2020

"What Is Justice? Gifted Students' Meaning Making" by Diane Barone and Rebecca Barone (The Reading Teacher, 2019)

The COVID-19 pandemic (re)surfaced xenophobic sentiments and led to increasing verbal and physical attacks on Asians in the United States and globally. In addition, the global civil rights movement in response to George Floyd's murder pushed all of us to (re)consider and push back against the racism that continues to murder the spirits, imaginations, and bodies of Black people. During times of social unrest, it is important for teachers to engage their students in critical and anti-racist, but sometimes uncomfortable, conversations around racism, social inequities, justice work, and white supremacy, as these are topics that surround them at home, in communities, on social media, and among peers. Barone and Barone provide examples of how teachers can prompt students to talk about difficult but necessary topics using picture books and poetry as springboards. The racially diverse students the authors worked with in this project started from a stanza in poetry and went on to discuss their opinions about justice, social inequities, and relations of power through personal storytelling, connections to popular media, writing, and drawing. Although the focal students are gifted, these activities are adaptable and transferable to other educational contexts and content areas.

—Reviewed by Tairan Qiu, The University of Georgia

Barone, D., & Barone, R. (2019). What is justice? Gifted students' meaning making. The Reading Teacher, 72(5), 579–588. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1761