In this much-needed book, the authors marshal research and several decades of their own experience to provide instructional practices and activities that will help teachers develop newcomers as readers and writers of English and engage them in content learning across the curriculum. Equally important, they show how teachers can advocate for these vulnerable students, many of whom have experienced multiple challenges in their home countries or in the United States, including poverty, violence and political persecution. With chapters on assessment and second-language acquisition as well as reading, writing, speaking and content learning, their book is a timely and comprehensive guide for any K-8 educator whose classroom or school includes newcomer students.

This volume brings together established and new scholarly voices to explore how participatory and situated approaches to learning can contribute to educational innovation. The contributors' critical examinations of educational programming and engagements provide insights into how educators, youth, families, and community members understand and enact their commitments to diversity and equitable access. Collectively, these essays complicate notions of community, alerting readers to ways in which community can be constructed other than in geographical and ethnoracial terms--as alliances and collaborations of individuals joining together to accomplish or negotiate shared agendas. The focus on agency combined with social context, a dialectic to which all of the authors speak, enlarges and invigorates our sense of what is pedagogically possible in societies characterized by diversity and flux. *Part I, "Linking Pedagogy to Communities," focuses on dynamic initiatives where practitioners collaborate with community members and other professionals as they acknowledge and build on the cultural, linguistic, and intellectual resources of ethnic-minority students and their communities. *Part II, "Professional Learning for Diversity," centers on the authors' experiences in facilitating opportunities for working with prospective and practicing teachers to develop situated pedagogies, highlighting both the challenges that emerge and the transformations that occur. *Part III, "Learning in Community (and Community in Learning), illustrates how educational innovation can extend beyond the realm of schools and classrooms by elucidating ways in which individuals construct learning venues in out-of-school settings. Learning, Teaching, and Community: Contributions of Situated and Participatory Approaches to Educational Innovation is a compelling and timely text ideally suited for courses focused on teacher education and development, informal learning, equity and education, multilingual and multicultural education, language and culture, educational foundations, and school reform/educational restructuring, and will be equally of interest to faculty, researchers, and professionals in these areas.

In an effort to reverse the purported crisis in U.S. public schools, the federal government, states, districts have mandated policies that favor standardized approaches to teaching and assessment. As a consequence, teachers have been relying on teacher-centered instructional approaches that do not take into consideration the needs, experiences, and interests of their students; this is particularly pronounced with English learners (ELs). The widespread implementation of these policies is particularly striking in California, where more than 25% of all public school students are ELs. This volume reports on three studies that explore how teachers of ELs in three school districts negotiated these policies. Drawing on sociocultural and poststructural perspectives on agency and power, the authors examine how contexts in which teachers of ELs lived and worked influenced the messages they constructed about these policies and mediated their decisions about policy implementation. The volume provides important insights into processes affecting the learning and teaching of ELs.

This volume brings together established and new scholarly voices to explore how participatory and situated approaches to learning can contribute to educational innovation. The contributors' critical examinations of educational programming and engagements provide insights into how educators, youth, families, and community members understand and enact their commitments to diversity and equitable access. Collectively, these essays complicate notions of community, alerting readers to ways in which community can be constructed other than in geographical and ethnoracial terms--as alliances and collaborations of individuals joining together to accomplish or negotiate shared agendas. The focus on agency combined with social context, a dialectic to which all of the authors speak, enlarges and invigorates our sense of what is pedagogically possible in societies characterized by diversity and flux. *Part I, "Linking Pedagogy to Communities," focuses on dynamic initiatives where practitioners collaborate with community members and other professionals as they acknowledge and build on the cultural, linguistic, and intellectual resources of ethnic-minority students and their communities. *Part II, "Professional Learning for Diversity," centers on the authors' experiences in facilitating opportunities for working with prospective and practicing teachers to develop situated pedagogies, highlighting both the challenges that emerge and the transformations that occur. *Part III, "Learning in Community (and Community in Learning), illustrates how educational innovation can extend beyond the realm of schools and classrooms by elucidating ways in which individuals construct learning venues in out-of-school settings. Learning, Teaching, and Community: Contributions of Situated and Participatory Approaches to Educational Innovation is a compelling and timely text ideally suited for courses focused on teacher education and development, informal learning, equity and education, multilingual and multicultural education, language and culture, educational foundations, and school reform/educational restructuring, and will be equally of interest to faculty, researchers, and professionals in these areas.

Children in Mexicano communities learn to use language in a variety of ways. At times they use both Spanish and English in the same conversation or help friends and family members enter mainstream society by translating English to Spanish for them. Pushing Boundaries describes Eastside, a Mexicano community in northern California, analysing language learning and language socialization in the context of real, problematic, important activities in people's lives. The authors consolidate three separate studies providing a unique perspective on the ways bilingual children and their families use and learn language. With children using the language of home, school and community separately and in combination, the book reveals how these children use their traditional language and cultural knowledge as a critical component for learning their second language and its underlying cultural norms.

Children in Mexicano communities learn to use language in a variety of ways. At times they use both Spanish and English in the same conversation or help friends and family members enter mainstream society by translating English to Spanish for them. Pushing Boundaries describes Eastside, a Mexicano community in northern California, analysing language learning and language socialization in the context of real, problematic, important activities in people's lives. The authors consolidate three separate studies providing a unique perspective on the ways bilingual children and their families use and learn language. With children using the language of home, school and community separately and in combination, the book reveals how these children use their traditional language and cultural knowledge as a critical component for learning their second language and its underlying cultural norms.