Students As Researchers Of Culture And Language In Their Own Communities

This text presents directions in classroom education generated by using ethnography and sociolinguistics as teaching tools, the theory behind these efforts, and the classroom practices involved. Chapters provide an introduction to ethnographic and sociolinguistic research, highlight the integration of students as researchers of culture and language in their own communities with concerns for academic learning, describe projects in which students studied language as sociolinguists, and describe how students' research on issues of culture and language was either a part of or led to their taking social action.

The Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts, a comprehensive overview of research on this topic, extends conceptualizations of literacy to include all of the communicative arts (reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing) and the visual arts of drama, dance, film, art, video, and computer technology.

Distinguished multiculturalist Sonia Nieto speaks directly to current and future teachers in this thoughtful integration of a selection of her key writings with creative pedagogical features. Offering information, insights, and motivation to teach students of diverse cultural, racial, and linguistic backgrounds, this text is intended for upper-undergraduate and graduate-level students and professional development courses. Examples are included throughout to illustrate real-life dilemmas about diversity that teachers face in their own classrooms; ideas about how language, culture, and teaching are linked; and ways to engage with these ideas through reflection and collaborative inquiry. Each chapter includes critical questions; classroom activities; and community activities suggesting projects beyond the classroom context. Over half of the chapters are new to this edition, bringing it up-to-date in terms of recent educational policy issues and demographic changes in our society.

Leaders in English Language Arts Education Research contains autobiographical essays by leading English Language Arts scholars throughout the world. In this volume, English Language Arts is presented as a complex and porous discipline—intersecting with writing, literacy studies, multicultural/multilingual education, digital and multimodal literacies, critical and social justice pedagogies, teacher education, linguistics and second language learning, and, not least of all, subject English, including teaching literature and drama. Contributors are retired or current professors in the following countries: Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, South Africa, and the United States. ELA scholars often begin their careers as K-12 teachers and then become teacher-educators at universities; due to this, they work at the intersection of theory and practice throughout their careers. Therefore, this volume will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate English Language Arts Education students as well as to in-service English practitioners. This volume will also appeal to ELA researchers at all levels since it contains first-hand, personal narratives of well-established ELA researchers as they reflect on their own development as scholars.

Exploring the social & contextual forces that shape the appearance of academic ability & disability, this book shows how these forces influence the perception of academic underachievement by minority students.

In the classroom, knowledge is widely distributed among the students and teacher, but is difficult to share across linguistic and cultural barriers. Seeking paths across these barriers, Lynne Wiltse meticulously explores the question: What is the discourse frame in which students and teachers work? Situated in a grade nine multilingual classroom, her work provides a rich description of the research process in the classroom. At the same time, she draws the reader sequentially through the analysis, revealing inferences in increasing levels of abstraction within a framework of “communities of practice.” She highlights issues related to second language acquisition, students’ immigration experiences, teaching, and learning, and points the way toward multi-vocal dialogues and practices that can forge a path across cultural and linguistic divides.

This edited volume contributes to the creation of a comprehensive and a more inclusive understanding of an increasingly complex global ELT landscape across countries as well as across teaching and learning settings. The volume brings together inquiries from language teachers, educators and researchers from different backgrounds in the Global South and the Global North, who use their experiences of shuttling across borders to reflect on the shaping of their pedagogical, research and professional practices across higher education settings. The chapters weave the personal, professional and theoretical in a seamless manner, examining transnational identities and pedagogical practices formed and informed by both communities – ‘home’ and ‘host’ – and include narratives that are not unidirectional. The contributing authors also use a variety of qualitative research methods, along with reflexive writing and exploration of the authors’ own positionalities, to shed light on transnational identities and critique dominant pedagogical assumptions.

Drawing on sociocultural theories of learning, this book examines how the everyday language practices and cultural funds of knowledge of youth from non-dominant or minoritized groups can be used as centerpoints for classroom learning in ways that help all students both to sustain and expand their cultural and linguistic repertoires while developing skills that are valued in formal schooling. Bringing together a group of ethnographically grounded scholars working in diverse local contexts, this volume identifies how these language practices and cultural funds of knowledge can be used as generative points of continuity and productively expanded on in schools for successful and inclusive learning. Ideal for students and researchers in teaching, learning, language education, literacy, and multicultural education, as well as teachers at all stages of their career, this book contributes to research on culturally and linguistically sustaining practices by offering original teaching methods and a range of ways of connecting cultural competencies to learning across subject matters and disciplines.