Drawing on data from a multi-year digital storytelling project, this comparative case study offers portraits of two emerging authors”one a child and the other a young adult”who used multiple media and modes to articulate pivotal moments in their lives and reflect on life trajectories. The conceptual framework blends recent scholarship on narrative, identity, and performance, with an eye towards fostering agency. These cases demonstrate how digital storytelling, in combination with supportive social relationships and opportunities for participation in a community based organization, provided powerful means and motivation for forming and giving voice to agentive selves.

In the current research climate favoring rigorous experimental studies of instructional scripts using randomly chosen treatment and control groups, education and literacy researchers and policy makers will do well to take stock of their current research base and assess critical issues in this new context. This review of research on classroom discourse as it affects reading comprehension begins by examining 150 years of research on classroom discourse, and then findings and insights shaped by intensive empirical studies of both discourse processes and reading comprehension over the last three decades. Recent sociocultural and dialogic research supports claims that classroom discourse, including small-group work and whole-class discussion, works as an epistemic environment (versus script) for literacy development. New studies examine situated classroom talk in relation to educational outcomes and cultural categories that transcend the classroom.

At the 2005 NCTE Annual Convention in Pittsburgh, Mollie Blackburn received the Alan C. Purves Award, given each RTE volume year for an article that holds particular promise to enhance classroom practice. Professor Blackburn’s award-winning article, “Disrupting Dichotomies for Social Change: A Review of, Critique of, and Complement to Current Scholarship on Gender and Literacy,” appeared in the May 2005 issue of RTE. In the essay that follows, she reflects on the further implications of this work for teachers and schools.

The research reported here examined word study as an approach to spelling instruction. In particular, the researchers investigated kindergarten children’s transfer of specific words, word knowledge, concepts about print, and strategies for spelling unknown words to their self-selected journal writing.

In literacy and composition studies, efforts to develop data-driven theories of disciplinary writing expertise and of writers’ developmental processes in joining specific discourse communities have so far been limited. This case study, of one writer’s experiences as an undergraduate history major, parses the multiple knowledge domains comprising disciplinary writing expertise and compares his beginning and later work for signs of developmental progress. A conceptual model of five knowledge domains writers must draw upon—discourse-community knowledge, subjectmatter knowledge, genre knowledge, rhetorical knowledge, and writing-process knowledge—is applied to the data both for analysis of the case and for exploring the usefulness of the conceptual model for further empirical and theoretical work. What results is a fuller depiction of the complexities of gaining expertise in any given discourse community, as well as an indication of the importance of educators across all disciplines considering the multi-dimensional and developmental nature of their curricula for building literacy skills.

Understandings of the ways home and school languages shape classroom dynamics and influence development, identity, and subsequent school success are important for teachers of both bilingual and African American students. This article builds a link between these complementary bodies of research by analyzing interactions in a second grade mainstream classroom in which the language development of bilingual and African American children were simultaneously relevant. We focus on two qualitatively different kinds of classroom language use: when instruction was solely in English, and when Spanish became a tool for instruction. Our findings suggest that the latter language practice subsequently marginalized the participation of English monolingual students; this especially affected the African American students in the classroom, who were interactionally delegitimized as participants in bilingual interaction despite their desire to participate in both languages. This study suggests the need to ensure that multilingualism is brought into the classroom as a resource for all students. Recognizing this need, however, necessitates interdisciplinary research that crosses the fields of second language acquisition, bilingual education, and sociolinguistics. Such disciplinary boundary crossing can usefully inform teachers and researchers looking for new understandings of language learning in contemporary classrooms.

So much has been made over the crisis in English literature as field, as corpus, and as canon in recent years, that some of it undoubtedly has spilled over into English education. This has been the case in predominantly English-speaking Anglo-American and Commonwealth nations, as well as in those postcolonial states where English remains the medium of instruction and lingua franca of economic and cultural elites. Yet to attribute the pressures for change in pedagogic practice to academic paradigm shift per se would prop up the shaky axiom that English education is forever caught in some kind of perverse evolutionary time-lag, parasitic of university literary studies. I, too, believe that English education has reached a crucial moment in its history, but that this moment is contingent upon the changing demographics, cultural knowledges, and practices of economic globalization.

This article explores the writing opportunities provided to Spanish-speaking and Mandarinspeaking English Language Learners at the fourth and fifth-grade level across the various classroom settings in which they participated daily: an all-English speaking classroom, an Englishas- a-second language (ESL) classroom, and a native-language classroom. The students’ school routines were quite complicated, as each interacted daily with several different teachers, and each setting entailed different tasks, expectations, and rules for governing interaction. As a result, students’ views of writing at school were somewhat fragmented. Even when assignments ostensibly focused on authentic communication, the students did not always recognize the purpose or value. Students primarily wrote expository essays, and seldom engaged in extended talk concerning the purposes and audiences for the texts they produced. Further, students were not encouraged to write in their native languages in settings other than their Chinese or Spanish classes, and, therefore, did not have many opportunities to explore their linguistic and cultural identities in the all-English or ESL settings. Despite these limitations, most of the students successfully negotiated the complex curriculum and found ways to explore their bilingual/bicultural identities.

Drawn from a year-long study in a combined first- and second-grade classroom, this article presents an interpretive portrait of two young students engaged in spontaneous talk while writing. We analyze their conversations to explore the subject positions these student writers assumed, those they assigned each other, and the related functions they assigned the texts they composed. Through our close reading of their conversations, we develop an analytic protocol for positional microanalysis of everyday conversations that honors the intertwined social and emotional dimensions of peer interactions. Countering those who would cast literacy development as the sequential attainment of discrete cognitive skills, we consider the ways that these social and emotional dimensions may interlace with intellectual growth as young children struggle to become students, writers, and people.

The authors gave the following talk at the 2003 NCTE Annual Convention in San Francisco upon receiving the Alan C. Purves Award, presented to the RTE article from the previous year’s volume judged most likely to have an impact on classroom practice. Writing as lead author, Pauline Harris traces the history of her interest in children’s intertextuality through her life as a classroom teacher, her doctoral studies in the Bay Area, and her recent work with colleagues Jillian Trezise and W. N. Winser in Australia. As they describe the impetus behind their award-winning article and suggest directions for future research, the authors challenge classroom teachers to understand children’s intertextuality as a source of pleasure and complexity, and as a guide to appropriate and engaging instruction.

We live in a time of the celebration of high technology and symbolic analysis, even predictions of the end of common work, yet physical work, work of body and hand, surrounds us, makes everyday life possible. For about six years now, I have been involved in a research project exploring the thought it takes to do physical work, the cognitive processes involved in various blue collar and service occupations like waitressing, hairstyling, plumbing, welding, industrial assembly, and the like. The study has led me to consider the way we categorize occupations, define intelligence, and think about learning and schooling. Of particular interest to readers of RTE will be my findings in the realm of literacy and numeracy. A number of people have already done important research on job-related literacy. What follows is in line with their research, though I would like to use it to help us reconsider some of the traditional ways we define and discuss written language, numbers, and graphics.

The paper focuses on intertextual conflicts during teacher-class interactions where teachers are reading and modeling texts as well as guiding children to read and talk about text content, purposes, genres, and structures. These conflicts are identified and examined within a conceptual framework that accounts for intertextuality in terms of written texts, lived experiences, lessons, and processes in individuals.

Examines the discourse in an English as a second or other language (ESoL) classroom in a best-case scenario that contrasted dramatically with more typical school settings. Samples student critical turns (SCTs) across a six-week literature-rich science unit. Shows that the teacher played a crucial role in extended dialogue among students.

Investigates the possible link between a classroom teacher’s implementation of alternative literacy assessment and her classroom instruction. Illuminates the role that alternative literacy assessments can play in the classroom in terms of reflecting literacy task performance, presenting information on students’ strengths and weaknesses, and improving the quality of instruction provided to all students.

Addresses issues of English language anxiety in two settings: English as a second language and mainstream classrooms. Reveals that interaction with Chicano students raised anxiety levels and that such strategies as avoidance were used to reduce anxiety. Concludes with recommendations for teaching and research that recognize the complexity of anxiety for English language learners.

Reflects on ethical issues that are central to the author’s work as an educational researcher. Argues that research ought to be practiced as a form of service that respects teachers and students and enables researchers to grow through a process of reflection.

Examines the collaborative discourse practices of the Red River Writing Project Teacher Research Group (RRWPTRG) as well as the processes by which this diverse group of classroom teachers developed into a discourse community of teacher researchers.

In this paper I examine the role of imagination in literacy learning using data collected over a 5-year period in my primary classrooms. My conception of imagination as a missing component in literacy instruction was raised by a child’s question about the importance of the read-aloud experience as a daily literacy practice. That question, and my failure to answer it effectively for my student, prompted me to undertake a close study of imagination and its role in discourse acquisition. The study progressed from a general look at how imagination makes itself visible in the work of children to a conceptual structure that proposes an inside-out theory of literacy learning. This structure presents identity, discourse appropriation, and what I am calling the authoring process as essential elements that are unified through the imaginative actions of students as they come into contact with the texts, tools, and props of each discipline. I argue that to be successful and meaningful to all, literacy teaching must begin and end with a focus on imagination.

This study describes some of the tensions and challenges that 9 student teachers faced as they attempted to apply theoretical tools or principles for teaching middle and secondary school English to the realities of practice. Several contexts or activity settings both shaped and complicated the appropriation process, including undergraduate experiences with and prior beliefs about English as a school subject, the preservice methods courses, field work prior to student teaching, and the classroom context for student teaching. To describe the socialization the student teachers experienced that mediated their appropriation of the principles of instructional scaffolding, we identified three modes of participation in teaching middle and secondary school English. For some, teaching included both the learning of classroom routines as well as reflective practice, that is, a theory-based consideration of instructional decisions; for some, teaching was a process of procedural display in that they were absorbed primarily in enacting lessons that worked for themselves and for their students, making it difficult for them to consider the principles underlying their instructional decisions; and for some, learning to teach was a matter of mastering routines, that is, adopting, without adaptation, curricular and instructional practices without concern for students’ understandings or for instructional principles espoused by the teacher education program. The data suggest that the alignment of various activity settings supported the appropriation of teaching tools and a reflective stance toward teaching and learning. On the other hand, when activity settings worked at cross-purposes with one another, they created obstacles for the appropriation of theoretical and practical tools emphasized at the university. This study suggests the importance of understanding the kinds of relationships that student teachers develop within each setting and how social settings get negotiated and identities get constructed as a result of personal history.

This semester-long qualitative study explores the effects of a high-stakes, direct writing test on 3 teachers and their students in 1 rural Maryland high school. Out of the 23 students in both classes, 14 students had been identified for special education services for physical or learning problems; all had either failed the test once or had not yet taken it. The researchers conducted interviews with teachers and students, observed their classrooms, and collected samples of student writing and other artifacts to address 3 questions: (a) How did the test influence teacher beliefs about writing instruction? (b) How did these teachers adapt their instruction to respond to the demands of the test? (c) How did students who had not passed the test respond to their writing instruction and how did preparation for the test affect their attitudes/beliefs about writing? Our findings suggest that an emphasis on test preparation diminished the likelihood of the teachers’ engaging in reflective practice that is sensitive to the needs of individual students, that the high-stakes assessment process discounted the validity of locally developed standards for assessing writing, and that the criteria for passing the test failed to take into consideration the rich variety of American culture and the complexity of literacy learning.

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Investigates cross-cultural tensions in Western writing pedagogy as reflected in Turkish teachers’ oppositional and accommodative attitudes and how those attitudes played out in classroom interactions. Discusses teachers’ perceptions concerning the effects of Western rhetorical styles on Turkish students’ thinking and identity, assumptions regarding philosophical and instructional objectives of Western approaches, and their views on what counts as good writing.

Argues that the marginality of English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) expatriate teachers exemplifies the postmodern condition affecting society at the end of the millennium. Uses the image of the paladin and its juxtaposition with the conceptual framework of postmodernity to generate new ways of thinking about issues in ESL/EFL teaching.

Reflects on the notion of community in public life. Considers the importance of developing and sustaining affective relationships in the larger public sphere, engaging in civic literacy (publicly consequential acts of citizenship) complemented and sustained by civil literacy (characterized by a willingness to listen), supported by critical empathy (establishing affective connections with other human beings).

Investigates, in a longitudinal study, the spelling development of young deaf children in the context of an integrated process writing classroom. Identifies/categorizes the spelling strategies employed by deaf writers as print-based, speech-based, and sign-based. Provides insights into the nature of cognitive processes in the deaf child.

Studies the moral dimension of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teaching to adults. Analyzes examples of classroom interaction to reveal the moral substrate of the teacher’s words and actions. Finds that various features of classroom routines and impromptu exchanges have profound moral significance. Suggests that the moral meanings present in classroom discourse cannot be reduced to simple judgments of right versus wrong.

Examines tense, aspect, and voice choices in the reporting verbs in a corpus of research articles from the "Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine." Investigates how such choices correlate with other syntactic elements in the citations, as well as with the discourse functions of the citations in their contexts.

Chinese students experience many difficulties in developing communicative competence in English in their English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses in China. This essay provides cultural information that may be useful for researchers and American EFL teachers of Chinese-born students, in Chinese or American universities. It first reviews the pedagogical approaches used by native Chinese-speaking teachers of English in an educational environment grounded in Confucian precepts for teaching, learning, and educational roles and responsibilities. It suggests that many of the limitations on Chinese students’ learning of English stem from a traditional teacher-centeredc lassroom and the use of rote-memorys trategies. After noting the obstacles faced by Chinese EFL teachers who have tried to implement communicative approaches, this essay offers guidelines for reconciling a communicative approach with traditional Chinese methods

This essay describes some of the primary features of educational criticism, an arts-based approach to qualitative inquiry. We first examine the aims of this approach, focusing on its potential to heighten our perceptions of the classroom. We next discuss four dimensions of educational criticism: descriptive (intended to vividly render the qualities that constitute an educational performance or product); interpretative (represented in the conceptual frameworks that allow critics to account for the attributes and patterns of interaction they have observed); normative (involving a process of articulating those values that inform conceptions of goodness within a given domain); and thematic (concerned with the utility of extracting some type of general understanding, image, principle, or lesson that transcends the particular of an individual case). Finally, we address questions of rigor as they apply to educational criticism and other forms of qualitative research. Specifically, we identify three criteria (consensual validation, structural corroboration, and referential adequacy) appropriate for assessing the credibility of such work. In suggesting criticism as one potential model for educational inquiry, we hope to encourage those researchers who seek to create compelling and richly textured accounts of current classroom practice.

This study sought to determine the value of a tiered model of staff development for five districts using Teacher Consultants (TCs) drawn from a parent district with a long writing project history. In these outreach projects, these TCs actualized the National Writing Project (NWP) principle of regarding teachers as expert consultants to their colleagues. Stake’s Contingency and Congruence Evaluation Model was used to establish 1) the relationships among the preconditions necessary for successful implementation of the staff development program, 2) the processes by which the program was to be implemented, and 3) the outcomes which were intended. Data across five replication sites consisted of evaluations from 366 participants; self-reports of changes in skill levels by 191 participants; self-reports of classroom practices implemented by 216 participant and control teachers; and pretest and posttest scores on essays written by 3,927 students of participant and control teachers. It was determined that most required preconditions were observed; that all intended processes of the programs in the replication sites were successfully accomplished; and that the expected outcomes in replication sites were, in fact, achieved. In terms of outcome data, most of the analyses reflect significant differences in writing achievement between treatment and control subjects, favoring students of trained teachers. A survey of classroom practices indicated that trained teachers at all levels implemented more varied composition activities than did non-trained teachers. The results are viewed in light of the literature on effective staff development and, in particular, on the NWP

This study provideas framework for analyzing t e multiplea spects of reader perspective in a teacher’s approacth to writing instruction. This framework is based on an examination of one teacher’s written comments on her students’ paper as well as on observations of her classroom. Analysis showed that the teacher’s perspectivaes a reader, as reflected by her written commenotsn students’ papers, differed (a) across students, especially for the two students at either end of the ability rangea; and (b) a cross writing assignmentrs, evealing differences in their difficulty but in ways not predicted by the theory underlying the assignment sequence. Groundeind the social processes of writing and reading in the context of the classroom, the framework gives researchers and teacher as way to explore reader perspective in teacher response to student writing and its influence on writing and learning to write.

This study reports the results of a three-year longitudinal evaluation of a National Writing Project site and illustrates the value of using multiple sources of data to evaluate aspects of National Writing Project sites. We examined the immediate effects of the Summer Institute by looking at teachers’ reactions to writing process Instruction both before and after the Summer Institute. We also examined longrange effects by looking at how teachers implemented the writing process in their classrooms over an extended period following Institute participation. Results indicate that during the Summer Institute teachers moved from self-oriented concerns about the writing process to concerns about how this approach would influence students and fellow teachers. Results also indicate how attendance at the Summer Institute affected classroom practice. We conclude with implications and questions for further study.

This investigation sought to determine how the active meaning-making process of 10 sixth-grade students with above average reading and writing ability was reflected in their written responses to four books of realistic fiction. Students kept literature response journals to record their ongoing thoughts and reflections during the reading process. The nine-point categorization scheme that emerged from the content of students’ responses was used to analyze the journals of 4 of these students in order to determine individual response styles. Further analysis revealed the sequence of response for these 4 students during each quarter of their reading and writing. The study suggests how complex and unique response to literature is for even upper elementary and middle school students

Most studies dealing with feedback and revision focus on teachers and students in composition courses. However, there is insufficient evidence for assuming that these studies are applicable to writing situations in non-composition courses. To investigate the writing processes of non-composition students, this study describes patterns of feedback and revision in four writing across the curriculum (WAC) courses. The first and final drafts of 20 WAC students were analyzed by a team of readers to determine the following: 1) the apparent aims and criteria underlying the feedback they received on first drafts; 2) the extent to which the students utilized this feedback while revising; 3) the criteria most affected by the revisions; and 4) the extent of the revisions. Several patterns that emerged in this study resemble those found in research involving composition classrooms, although there are some differences as well. The study also highlights several issues for future research, including the source of a writer’s or reader’s criteria for effective writing and the comparative value of global and non-global revisions.

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This naturalistic study, coauthored by a composition specialist and a philosopher, explores the learning experiences of college students in an Introduction to Philosophy course and the learning experiences of the research collaborators themselves. The researchers identify conflicting ways of knowing in class discussion, student writing, and within their own interdisciplinary collaboration. They then ask questions about how these ways of knowing interact and with what effects. In order to answer these questions the researchers drew upon student data they collected in two consecutive semesters as well as the close records they kept of their own collaborative work. Four research methods were used: observation, interviews, composing-aloud protocols, and text analysis. Conclusions are drawn from the data regarding the benefits for students and researchers of juxtaposing multiple epistemological perspectives. Also presented are conclusions about the learning contexts that promote epistemic growth. The textual form of this study is “heteroglossic,” that is, certain sections are written by the researchers, certain sections by the teacher-researcher, and others are coauthored by both.

The study was conducted in a classroom that used a process approach to literacy. Ten case studies examined the ability of 6th grade Hispanic bilingual students to construct meaning in dialogue journals and literature logs in first and second language. Journals and literature logs were coded and analyzed for language code (L1/L2), topic, codeswitching, sensitivity to audience, writer’s voice, spelling, and grammatical structures. Findings indicate that students were more effective in constructing meaning in dialogue journals than in literature logs. Success in the journals revealed positive self-images while failure with literature logs evoked poor self-concepts. Findings also suggest that implementation of process approaches can pose its own set of instructional problems that need to be addressed, especially when effectiveness is judged in terms of the particular students involved. For example, although the students in this study were able to write in English before having complete control of the language, their development of complex ideas and the construction of meaning suffered considerably. The length and quality of the writing also degenerated when the topic was imposed, when students found no relevance in the literacy activity, and when they were not assisted in contextualizing writing tasks in their own terms. Overall, mere exposure to standard writing conventions did not improve the students’ use of them. The practice of implementing popular instructional programs without incorporating appropriate social, cultural, and linguistic adaptations appears to be ineffective with L2 learners.

This paper compares the effects of pencil-and-paper and computer-assisted versions of a process/model approach in a college writing program with the effects of a more traditional approach. Three empirical measures are used in the study: a frequency count of linguistic markers of argumentation and comparison/contrast based on previous work by Odell (1977), a measure of the number of arguments, and a measure of their logical integrity. All significant differences favored students in the experimental sections, who used more markers, made more arguments and made stronger arguments. Students in the computer-assisted (CAI) version of the experimental approach used still more markers than students in the pencil-and-paper version, suggesting that the CAI materials may enhance the efficiency of student learning of some formal aspects of reasoning in writing. These results suggest that it may be possible to attain a postprocess paradigm for teaching writing and thinking that transcends the dialectic that places process and product in opposition to each other.

To explore how writers with extensive experience and learning in an academic discipline used both topical and rhetorical knowledge to construct synthesis essays, 40 graduate students equally representing the two disciplines of psychology and business wrote synthesis essays on either supply-side economics or rehearsal in memory. Half of the writers completed think-aloud protocols, and their composing processes were analyzed for different qualities and frequencies of elaborations and rhetorical awareness and for task representation. Their written products (40 essays) were analyzed for the importance and origin of information and for the quality of key rhetorical moves. Analyses of variance revealed that high-knowledge writers evidenced more local and evaluative elaborations as well as an awareness of rhetorical contexts. They also included more new information in their essays in the top levels of essay organizations. Low-knowledge writers elaborated less but did rely on structural and content-based awareness to compose, factors which also were influenced by specific topics and disciplines, and they included comparable amounts of borrowedimplicit information in their essays. Intercorrelations of process and product features revealed that evaluative elaborations and awareness of rhetorical context corresponded with the presence of new information in essays for all 40 writers, suggesting that prior knowledge of an academic topic may take the form of a complex, situational strategy for composing. The findings confirm the interrelatedness of comprehension and composing processes and illustrate how writers, with varying levels of topic familiarity, use both their knowledge of disciplinary topics and their experience as readers and writers to compose synthesis essays.

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The aim of this study was to describe the development of audience-adapted writing skills between the end of elementary school and the beginning of college. Students in grades 5, 7, 9, and 11, and college freshmen, were given the task of rewriting a linguistically complex story for a young reader. Analyses of rewritten stories showed significant, agerelated decreases in mean lexical and syntactic complexity, as well as significant increases in mean reading ease. Further analyses of the alteration of difficult lexical items and rewriting of the moral of the story suggested a shift from extensive use of “word-oriented” strategies in the lower grades to increasing use of a “meaning-oriented” approach in the higher grades.

Given the existing literature on text summarization that documents what learners, particularly younger learners, cannot do, a study was designed to assess what fifth-grade students can do. Thirty students at two reading levels read an expository text, produced a summary, reflected on the summarizing process, and identified good and bad summaries for the text. Both successful and less successful readers were fairly adept at recognizing good summaries, but proficiency group differences emerged for production and reflection measures. Readers in both proficiency groups performed at below-ceiling levels on the production and reflection measures.

The discussion of the nature and role of so-called “dialect, interference” in writing has been carried on in a literature which has failed to define its terms consistently, reported experimental results for poorly defined samples, and assumed much that has yet to be established empirically. Written partially as a response to Patrick Hartwell’s 1980 RTE article on the same topic, this paper examines these flaws in the literature of dialect interference in greater detail, examines the seven “correlates” of Hartwell’s “print code hypothesis” and finds them wanting or uninstructive, and sets forth suggestions for a more sophisticated study of this issue.