Language and Literacy (Journal)
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Native versus Nonnative: A Literacy Teacher Educator’s Story
No full textThis paper presents a story of a nonnative English-speaking teacher educator who prepares native English-speaking pre- and in-service teachers to teach literacy/language arts in elementary school. It portrays what the teacher educator has experienced in exploring the meaning and purpose of literacy education for native speakers. A critical investigation of the teacher educator’s pedagogical practices in relation to his philosophical perspectives stands out as the backbone of the story. Through this investigation, the tension between “native” and “nonnative” is cast in a new light and argued to be a positive quality that should be valued in the field of literacy education
Exquisite Attention: Introduction to the Special Issue of Language & Literacy
No full textIt gives me great honour to welcome you to this special issue of Language & Literacy. In this issue you will find a range of thoughtful and provocative inquiries that reflect some of the diverse range of research in language and literacy education today. This issue was born of the recent marriage of the Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada (LLRC) and Language & Literacy: A Canadian ejournal. From this point forward these two organizations have made a commitment to support each other in their efforts to sustain critical conversations about language and literacy education and research
Exquisite Attention: From Compliance to Production
No full textAttention has been a focus of much of the work I’ve done over the last several years, and in particular the ‘attentional economies’ (Lankshear and Knobel, 2002; de Castell and Jenson, 2005) involving teachers and learners in both classroom-based and non-formal educational environments. What has become very clear is the need to distinguish between attentional behaviours, and other, more complex, more demanding and more generally ‘educative’ kinds of attention. I’m drawn to the idea of ‘exquisite attention’, (Lather 2007:16) and particularly interested in the pleasures of attention, as well of course as its productivity. Maybe its exquisiteness, a pleasure of attention, can be related to its productivity. We have long known that attention can be productive indeed, all by itself, seemingly. Consider the Hawthorne Effect, notorious among researchers---as soon as I begin to pay attention to you, you get better at what you are doing. Having other people pay close and careful attention to what you are doing often helps you do it better. But I want to argue that exquisite attention can never come from other people, but only from ourselves. And I want to set out some ways to see an ethics, an epistemology and a pedagogy in this small claim. Probably many of us gain considerable enjoyment from having other people pay attention to our work, but I’m going to argue that this is a mistake, and a misleading one, in several important ways
Can Learning Be Fun and Games? The Influence of Everyday Language on Students’ Content Vocabulary Use and Concept Understanding
No full textThis study examined the use of everyday language employed during game play to discover if this form of classroom discourse helped adolescents learn content area vocabulary and concepts. Data were collected in a grade 7 science class where the students played 5 instructional games during a six-week unit studying Mountain Building that targeted 26 vocabulary words. Data collected included audio recordings, written documents, interviews, formal and informal assessments, and field notes. Results indicated that the participants’ use of scientific language in both written and oral discourse during games was appropriate and comparable to other measures. Further, it was discovered that during games participants used everyday language to build understandings that exceeded token use of the academic vocabulary and concepts through collaborative talk. This study suggests that games provide a non-threatening forum for discussion and the exchange of ideas and implementing games as an alternate instructional strategy allows students to utilize their diverse ways of knowing and speaking
Complex language encounters: Observations from linguistically diverse South African classrooms
No full textThis article reports on the initial observation phase of a larger, longitudinal project that explores complex language encounters in grades R (Reception) to 3 classrooms in South Africa. Complex language encounters refer to teacher-learner exchanges that take place when neither teachers nor learners are first language speakers of the language of instruction, in this case English. Observations during teaching practice visits to linguistically and culturally diverse South African urban classrooms yielded several vignettes that illustrate the need for teachers to be provided with strategies to lessen the confusion of some language encounters. Although preliminary, our findings underline how critical it is for teachers to possess full proficiency in the language of instruction as well as cross-cultural competence. That is, in order to attend adequately to diverse learners’ sense-making efforts, teachers need to know how to relate to learners by ‘border crossing’ linguistically, culturally and conceptually
The Interpretive Movements of Language and Desire: Engagements of Poetry and Place in Qualitative Research
No full textIn this work, I seize on the movements of language engaged in the confusions of qualitative research. I examine the impressions and effects of a researcher’s desires, in which language serves simultaneously as a point of alienation, and as an imperfect enunciatory tool forever directed at satisfaction. Provoking a haunted analysis of autobiographical place, I also dwell in the poetic influences of topographical reading. The result is a methodological inquiry into the ways we move when we do educational re-search, and the curricular paths that languages help to inscribe in this performance
I Do Not Own Gossip Girl”: Examining the Relationship between Teens, Fan Fiction, and Gossip Girl
No full textAfter reading Gossip Girl, I explored several pieces of fan fiction related to the series that were created by teen authors. From these pieces, I observed how teens can use fan fiction to exercise their own creative ideas, align a fictional world with their own, connect with other fans and writers, and receive instant feedback on their work. From these findings, I suggest how teachers and librarians can use this knowledge to support teens that are engaged or interested in the practices of writing fan fiction and writing for pleasure
Exploring Bicultural Experiences: Responding to a Chinese American Young Adult Novel
No full textReading and responding to ethnic literature that is reflective of one’s own experiences often has significant value for the younger members of the parallel cultures. This paper reports the results of the responses of young adult and adult Asian and Asian American readers to a Chinese American young adult novel set in the 1920’s. The findings suggest that (1) cultural background played a major role in reader response, (2) cross-cultural reading responses revealed readers’ ethnic identity development, especially when dealing with between-world situations, and (3) Chinese Americans continue to experience racial discrimination today. Implications for educators include the importance of critical literacy and the inclusion of multiethnic literature in the K-12 curriculum
Observing children writing on screen: Exploring the process of multi-modal composition
No full textThis article reports on small-scale studies from the United Kingdom which investigated the processes engaged in by children as they composed texts on screen using e-mail, PowerPoint and Word. The findings highlight these children’s attention to visual features and the iterative way in which they engaged with different aspects of the writing process. Considerable creativity was evident in their writing, particularly in their use of multiple modes and the interplay between use of ready-made resources and the development of ideas for composition. Implications of these findings for the teaching and assessment of writing and further research are considered
Being and Becoming American: Triangulating Habitus, Field, and Literacy Instruction in a Multilingual Classroom
No full textThis case study research documents how one teacher’s personal language and literacy practices and the sociopolitical structures of her profession intersect in her literacy instruction for her multilingual third grade students. Centering my analysis on Graff’s (1987) notion of the “literacy myth,” I discuss how the dialectic between Bourdieu’s habitus and field unfolds in the performative space of the classroom, challenging this discourse in small but significant ways. Complimenting research exploring students’ out-of-school language and literacy practices, this paper addresses how a teacher’s literate life history is performed in the classroom and who stands to benefit from these discursive performances