Joanne Larson

Talk Matters: The Role of Pivot in the Distribution of Literacy Knowledge among Novice Writers.

Abstract Data drawn from an ethnographic study of kindergarten journal writing activity suggest that literacy knowledge is distributed socially through shifts in participant roles, or footings, within the participation framework of the activity. Discourse analysis of moment-to-moment talk and interaction reveals that activity participants assume a variety of participant roles available in the participation framework. By assuming these roles, literacy knowledge is distributed from restricted teacher—student dyads to other student overhearers. In this way, the participation framework highlights the ways in which participants in writing activity gain access to the social distribution of literacy knowledge that may otherwise be limited by restricting talk to dyadic interaction. Furthermore, the role of the participation framework as a mediating tool in purposeful writing activity is emphasized as a key factor in the distribution of literacy knowledge.

Multiple Literacies, Curriculum, and Instruction in Early Childhood and Elementary School.

This article describes some implications of using a multiple literacies perspective in the construction and implementation of literacy curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment in early childhood and elementary classrooms. After briefly laying out a theoretical perspective in sections focusing on early literacy, academic learning, literacy beyond schools, literacy and social justice, and assessment, the article grounds the theoretical claims in examples of classroom practice. The article closes with the argument that by shifting the focus of the teaching and learning of literacy from an autonomous model to include a multiple literacies perspective, we can construct authentic spaces for learning that prepare students for equitable participation in a global communication and information economy.

Tactical Underlife: Understanding Student’s Perceptions

This article describes one urban classroom and the language and literacy practices jointly constructed by a veteran urban teacher, Lynn Gatto, and her 3rd grade students. Drawing from two ethnographic studies of Gatto’s 2nd–4th grade looped classroom, we argue that Gatto and her students use the interplay between strategies and tactics (De Certeau, 1984) and between disruptive and contained underlife (Goffman, 1961), or what we are calling tactical underlife, to construct their own spaces of resistance to the constraining demands of the standardization and accountability movement.

Analyzing Participation Frameworks in Kindergarten Writing Activity: The Role of Overhearer in Learning to Write.

This article focuses on the role of overhearer participation in learning to write. Using Goffmans notion of the participation framework as a linguistic structure that organizes and is organized by talk and interaction in activity, data drawn from an ethnographic study of kindergarten journal writing activity will be presented in a discussion of how shifts in participant roles contribute to text construction.

Indexing Instruction: The Social Construction of the Participation Framework in Kindergarten Journal-Writing Activity

The purpose of this article is to discuss the ways in which the participation framework of writing activity is socially constructed over the course of interaction. Using data from an ethnographic study of kindergarten journal-writing activity, the author demonstrates how, over time, both the teacher and the students in this classroom community socialize each other to discrete roles within the instructional participation framework, thus creating a normative structure for participation in classroom literacy activity. The article focuses specifically on the ways in which the teacher indirectly indexes her instructional goal of independent writing. In this classroom, then, the participation framework constitutes and is constituted by, the linguistic context within which learning to write is socially mediated.

Packaging Process: Consequences of Commodified Pedagogy on Students’ Participation in Literacy Events

This article presents analyses of the language and literacy practices in one urban kindergarten.The intent is to examine ways in which process-oriented materials and pedagogies are used as decontextualized language arts ‘packages’ to teach isolated literacy skills. Furthermore, I will describe the consequences of this practice on students’ access to literacy events. I draw on Goffman’s (1981) conception of the participation framework as a linguistic structure that organizes and is organized by talk and interaction in activity to analyze what roles were available in the participation framework in this classroom and how these roles mediated access to meaningful participation in literacy events. Discourse analysis of available roles in the participation framework showed that student participation in literacy events was limited to the observation of ‘pedagogized’ literacy practices (Street, 1995).

Challenging autonomous models of literacy: Street's call to action

Abstract This article reviews Brian Streets (1995) book Social Literacies: Critical Approaches to Literacy Development, Ethnography, and Education in light of current debates in literacy and education. This essay review will discuss Streets analysis of current issues in the field of literacy with specific focus on his definitions of autonomous and ideological models of literacy and how the shift from autonomous to ideological models will transform literacy practices. The review concludes with a challenge to researchers to think specifically about how Streets work might impact their own research.

Curriculum and the Publishing Industry

Publishers of curricula play a powerful role in the kinds of texts and official knowledge available in schools, as textbooks are often the dominant textual resource used by teachers and students. As textbook production becomes an increasingly privatized and globalized process, the influence that publishers have on what counts as knowledge in schools increases. The authors argue that attention should be given to who makes consequential decisions about the production and codification of knowledge in the form of curricular materials, and who is benefiting – economically, politically, and culturally – from these globalized and unequal processes of production and consumption.

Expressing community through freedom market and visual connections

ABSTRACT Building on a long-term university/community research partnership, this article examines how different ways of conceptualizing, interpreting, and producing murals impacted how an urban community saw itself. Using a participatory action research design, university researchers worked alongside community researchers to ethnographically document the transformation. Findings indicate that the mural project constructed pathways for building relationships and community in ways that made neighborhood transformation possible. The mural project embodied this transformative goal by providing a space where people gathered with shared attention to talk and to envision how their lives and their community could be different.

Literacy, Equity, and Imagination: Researching With/In Communities

This article focuses on the meaning and practice of publicly engaged scholarship. The authors use examples of research in partnership with communities to demonstrate what it means to be with or in a community, how mutuality can be established, and how trust can be earned. The article addresses how university-based researchers can be fully present in shared work with communities and stand with community partners in an effort to answer questions together. The first author discusses the idea of teaching as a form of publicly engaged scholarship that is community-centric, collaborative, humanizing, and guided by equity and justice. The second author discusses what it means to “stand” with community in the fight for justice and argues that we need to rethink what counts as knowledge production when working authentically alongside community instead of at or for them. The third author considers what it means to take seriously children’s ideas and perspectives as we imagine new possibilities for literacy, learning, equity, and diversity in local and global community spaces. The fourth author concludes with a discussion of issues raised and features of community-engaged literacy research evident across all examples.