Christine C. Pappas

Intertextuality in Read-Alouds of Integrated Science-Literacy Units in Urban Primary Classrooms: Opportunities for the Development of Thought and Language

The nature and evolution of intertextuality was studied in 2 urban primary-grade classrooms, focusing on read-alouds of an integrated science-literacy unit. The study provides evidence that both debunks deficit theories for urban children by highlighting funds of knowledge that these children bring to the classroom and the sense they make of them and demonstrates how intertextuality in classroom discourse creates learning opportunities as teachers and students interact with texts broadly defined. Changes over time of the various forms of intertextuality emerged in the 2 classes, thereby showing how intertextuality is both an act of discourse and an act of mind. A particular type of intertextuality-event intertextuality-dominated throughout the read-alouds and revealed how hybrid classroom discourse, incorporating both narrative and scientific genre features, allowed the emergence of classroom discourse that shared characteristics with scientific language.

Dialogic Inquiry around Information Texts: The Role of Intertextuality in Constructing Scientific Understandings in Urban Primary Classrooms

Abstract This article develops a typology of intertextuality identified in collaborative read-alouds of science information books during an integrated science-literacy unit on States of Matter in two urban primary classrooms. It provides classroom discourse examples to illustrate the forms and functions of the instances of intertextuality, and the ways in which teachers and children jointly constructed scientific understandings and linguistic registers. Issues such as the importance of dialogic speech genres and the hybridity of such classroom discourse, allowing for the voices of children who come from diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds are examined as they are related to intertextuality.

New Directions for Studying Historical Understanding

Much of the research on historical understanding has been based on the Piagetian concept of global stage constraints on learning. Such research has led to arguments against teaching history at the elementary level and lent support to the traditional “expanding environments” curriculum. This paper contrasts Piagetian-based research with psychological work in the areas of script knowledge-based and domain-specific knowledge restructuring theories of development. Drawing on ideas from interpretive anthropology and semiotics, the authors then place this primarily psychological work in a cultural framework, and give consideration to the relevance of theories of narrative for studying historical understanding. Using this approach, the authors suggest both new directions for studying the development of historical understanding and implications for history instruction in the elementary years.

A sociolinguistic perspective on retelling procedures in research on children's cognitive processing of written text*

This article raises critical issues concerning the oral retelling research with preschool and elementary-age children for the past decade (1977–1986) from a sociolinguistic perspective. Using Halliday and Hasans framework of “context of situation”, this retelling research was examined in terms of field, tenor, and mode in order to address the following issues: (1) the speaker-listener characteristics existing during childrens retellings, (2) the nature of instructions given to the subjects, (3) the type of texts used in the studies, and, (4) the analysis schemes applied to the texts. The article indicates several problematic areas in the studies and suggests directions for future research utilizing retelling procedures in cognitive studies of text.

Dialogic Strategies in Read-Alouds of English-Language Information Books in a Second-Grade Bilingual Classroom.

This article shows how various dialogic discourse strategies were used in read-alouds of English science information books in a 2nd-grade bilingual classroom. Using a variety of discursive strategies, Ibett encouraged her Spanish-speaking students to provide explanations and reasoning related to science ideas. Similarly, she used intertextual connections to prior classroom discourse, prompted deep understanding of new concepts, and reinforced vocabulary. This article illustrates that it is possible to employ dialogic practices in read-alouds of English informational science texts in bilingual classrooms to strengthen both language/literacy and science instruction.

Learning to Tell: Aspects of Developing Communicative Competence in Young Children's Story Retellings

ABSTRACTAs teachers have shifted from basal to more literature-based reading/language arts programs, they have frequently encouraged children to produce oral retellings of books read or heard. The authors describe ways in which oral retellings, as oral compositions, can serve as holistic literacy experiences for young children in the transition from oracy to literacy in elementary classrooms. The authors examine how children employ various wordings in story retellings to naive listeners, and suggest how childrens linguistic choices provide a means to understand and assess their developing communicative competence. The importance of the social context in which retellings are produced is emphasized and implications regarding the role of retellings in the classroom are discussed.

Science Learning in Urban Elementary School Classrooms: Liberatory Education and Issues of Access, Participation and Achievement

We examine what we know about science learning inside classrooms in American urban elementary schools that educate predominately low-income students of colour (African-Americans and Latino/as). Mindful of a Freirean liberatory framework for education, we analyse research published in journals in the last decade that addresses classroom learning issues, what learning takes place and how, benefits (perceived and conceived) of science learning, when classroom learning is more successful and for whom, and the relationship between teaching and learning. The research synthesis points to the usefulness of various constructs, such as language, identity, hybridity and meaning making in exploring and understanding science learning in the urban elementary school classrooms of students who usually have limited access, participation and achievement in science.

Young Children’s Multimodal Identity Stories about Being Scientists

An important goal of science education is helping students develop sophisticated understandings about what science is, how it is done, and for what purposes (National Research Council, 1996, 2012). Just as importantly, science education should help students imagine themselves within scientific activity, including considering what counts as science in and out of school in more robust ways (Bang & Medin, 2011). In this chapter, we present findings from a series of interviews, given three times throughout one school year, that asked 54 children in six classrooms, grades 1–3, to draw and talk about two times they were scientists.

Concept Development in Urban Classroom Spaces: Dialectical Relationships, Power, and Identity

Conceptual development in science has been studied for decades with learners of all ages and for a variety of science topics, ideas, and concepts. Increasingly, scholars have presented differing views regarding what it is important to be studying about conceptual development and conceptual change, how teaching practice is/should be influencing and be influenced by research in this domain, the extent to which cognition, social interactions, and affect/emotions (could) shape conceptual development and change, the extent to which language and other modes of communication influence, or possibly constitute, concept development/ change, and whether, and the degree to which (from zero to a high degree), a variety of theoretical frameworks can be used together and inform research in this domain.