While student agency is considered an important aspect of classroom learning, opportunities to support and promote agency can be easily missed. This book addresses the inner dimensions of student agency to show what it is, why it is needed, and how it can be translated into instructional practices. In Part I, Locating Student Agency, Vaughn offers a model of agency that can become a core remedy for educators looking for new and better ways to support the learning of historically marginalized students. Part II, Growing Student Agency, illuminates opportunities during instruction where teachers can build upon student contributions. The book includes the voices of teachers who have transformed their classrooms, as well as compelling case stories rich with ideas that teachers can adopt in their own instruction. Student Agency in the Classroom will provide educators at every level, and across all disciplines, with the underlying research and theoretical rationale for this key educational force, along with the practical means to incorporate it into instruction and curriculum.Book Features: A comprehensive framework that outlines three core dimensions needed to cultivate student agency: dispositional, motivational, and positional. Detailed strategies and ideas for creating a culture of agency in the classroom and schoolwide. A collaborative way of thinking about how teachers, teacher educators, and school leaders can promote and cultivate agency. The author's experience as a classroom teacher, professional developer, and researcher. Classroom vignettes, teacher interviews, and conversations with students. Extension sections and discussion questions at the end of chapters.

In this seminal book on the construction of case studies in the field of language and literacy, the authors consider in detail what it means to be ""on the case."" They evaluate the basic assumptions that ground a qualitative approach to case study methodology, the decisions entailed in designing a case study, and the possibilities and challenges of data collection and analysis. For the novice researcher, this book is an essential manual on how to design and carry out a case study. For the experienced researcher, this book offers fresh insights into the theoretical issues that underpin qualitative case study research.

Through analysis of case studies of young children (ages 3 to 8 years), situated in different geographic, cultural, linguistic, political, and socioeconomic sites on six continents, this book examines the interplay of childhoods, schooling, and, literacies. Written language is situated within particular childhoods as they unfold in school. A key focus is on children's agency in the construction of their own childhoods. The book generates diverse perspectives on what written language may mean for childhoods. Looking at variations in the complex relationships between official (curricular) visions and unofficial (child-initiated) visions of relevant composing practices and appropriate cultural resources, it offers, first, insight into how those relationships may change over time and space as children move through early schooling, and, second, understanding of the dynamics of schools and the experience of childhoods through which the local meaning of school literacy is formulated. Each case-each child in a particular sociocultural site-does not represent an essentialized nation or a people but, rather, a rich, processual depiction of childhood being constructed in particular local contexts and the role, if any, for composing.

Through analysis of case studies of young children (ages 3 to 8 years), situated in different geographic, cultural, linguistic, political, and socioeconomic sites on six continents, this book examines the interplay of childhoods, schooling, and, literacies. Written language is situated within particular childhoods as they unfold in school. A key focus is on children's agency in the construction of their own childhoods. The book generates diverse perspectives on what written language may mean for childhoods. Looking at variations in the complex relationships between official (curricular) visions and unofficial (child-initiated) visions of relevant composing practices and appropriate cultural resources, it offers, first, insight into how those relationships may change over time and space as children move through early schooling, and, second, understanding of the dynamics of schools and the experience of childhoods through which the local meaning of school literacy is formulated. Each case-each child in a particular sociocultural site-does not represent an essentialized nation or a people but, rather, a rich, processual depiction of childhood being constructed in particular local contexts and the role, if any, for composing.

In their new collaboration, Celia Genishi and Anne Haas Dyson celebrate the genius of young children as they learn language and literacy in the diverse contexts that surround them. Despite burgeoning sociocultural diversity, many early childhood classrooms (pre-K to grade 2) offer a 'one-size-fits-all' curriculum, too often assessed by standardized tests. In contrast, the authors propose diversity as the new norm. They feature stories of children whose language learning is impossible to standardize, and they introduce teachers who do not follow scripts but observe, assess informally, respond to, and grow with their children. Among these children are rapid language learners and those who take their time to become speakers, readers, and writers at 'child speed.' All these learners, regardless of tempo, are often found within the language-rich contexts of play.

This dynamic book examines how literacy learning can be expanded and redefined using the medium of spoken word poetry. The author tells the story of a passionate Language Arts teacher and his work with "The Power Writers", an after-school writing community of Latino and African American students. Featuring rich portraits of literacy in action, this book introduces teaching practices for fostering peer support, generating new vocabulary, discussing issues of Standard American English, and using personal experiences as literary inspiration.