http://www.aera.

net/uploadedFiles/Journals_and_Publications/Journals/Educational_
Researcher/Volume_33_No_3/03ERv33n3-Hawkins.pdf
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 14
There is a curious disjuncture in the current discourse(s) on the
schooling of immigrant and minority students. The official discourse,
as has been communicated through the federal No Child Left Behind
Act of 2001 rhetoric and the concomitant focus on standards and
assessment, says that minority children, especially English language
learners (ELLs) must gain “standard” English language skills in an unreasonably
short time frame, while achieving on par with native English
speaking students in academic content areas. Policy decisions
at federal, state, and local levels are being made without input from
educational researchers and professionals who have expertise in
these areas. However, even within educational circles there is
heated debate about how best to educate ELLs, and what “best practices”
and “best programs” look like.

W e are experiencing an unprecedented wave of immigration

nationally. Data from the United States

Department of Education show that the number
of students with “limited English skills” in U.S. schools has
doubled in the last decade, with the current count at 5 million.
Current data simultaneously identify a shortage of teachers
across the nation who are qualified or trained to teach these
children. A recent New York Times article (Zhao, 2002) claims
that there is currently one qualified teacher available for every
100 ELLs.
This places these controversies at the forefront of the crises facing
education today. Not only do we have contradictory (and
sometimes uninformed) discourses at play, which are shaping educational
policy, we also have little unity among opinions within
the field of education itself. And we now have the majority of
classroom teachers in this country serving ELLs with no preparation
or professional knowledge in how best to do so.
This article focuses on research on second language acquisition
(SLA) in classrooms and school environments where English
is the language of instruction, and addresses the disjuncture
between what is known (and by whom) and what it is that we
need to know and take into account to make informed decisions
about schooling and instructional designs for ELLs. It proposes
a theoretical framework within which research might be conducted
that ultimately could inform all stakeholders as to best educational
policies and practices for immigrant and non-native
English-speaking students.

Researching English Language and

Literacy
Development in Schools
by Margaret R. Hawkins
Focus on SLA
Research in SLA, whether the focus is on children or adults, has
long been rooted in understandings about language and language
use derived from linguistics and applied linguistics, and carries embedded
assumptions that influence the ways we think about learning
and teaching language. It is assumed that when we talk about
“English” we have a common ascribed definition, as we do about
the notions of “literacy,” “learning,” “teaching,” and “school.” Yet
there is a growing body of interdisciplinary work that destabilizes
these taken-for-granted meanings, especially in realms that converge
around issues of language, culture, and identity. This work
draws on new conceptualizations that, at core, look at what happens
when diverse languages and cultures come into contact as
part of human behavior and interaction, always situated in larger
(but specific) social and cultural contexts. In this article, ideas are
recruited from multiple fields such as anthropology, social psychology,
cognitive psychology, sociology, cultural studies, literary
theory, critical theory, communications, new literacy studies,
semiotics, and linguistics to inform the ways we conceptualize
classrooms as spaces in which language and literacy skills develop
through situated social practices.
There has been a critical lack, in SLA research literature, of
studies looking at just what it is that occurs with ELLs in their
schooling, and of ways to theorize about socialization into the
language and literacy practices of school (Hawkins, in press a).
This theorizing must account not only for socialization into the
language practices of the classroom, but also into the social practices,
as language learning is intricately bound up with social
identities that learners acquire in new social contexts (Norton,
1995, 2000), and new language, practices, and identities are acquired
through apprenticeships to new discourse communities
(Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1994; Vygotsky, 1978). This is
beginning to be addressed through recent studies that examine
socialization patterns and social interactions in early elementary
classrooms (see Toohey, 1998, 2000, 2001; Willett, 1995). But
there has not been, to date, a close identification of the multiple
forms of language and literacy practices in classrooms, a comprehensive
look at how ELLs do and/or don’t engage in these
practices, what strategies they have available to them (psychoand
socio-linguistically) to enable participation, and what successful
scaffolding and supportive environments might look like.
These issues call for a framework for researching the language
and literacy development of ELLs in classrooms that is predicated
on a view of language development and classroom participation
for learners as part of a socialization process; that is,
learners are apprenticing to the requisite linguistic, academic,
and social practices of schools. The guiding metaphor is that of Educational
Researcher, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 14–25
15 APRIL 2004
classrooms as complex ecological systems, with multiple, complex
and often interdependent components and characteristics
that students must negotiate (both socially and academically) in
order to come to participate.
This article identifies some of the key theoretical constructs on
which such a view is predicated, outlines a research agenda that
identifies integrative components and processes, and illustrates
through examples from research how this perspective can help
educators to better serve ELLs in their classrooms. It provides, as
well, a rationale and call for collaborative research models and
methodologies. The goal is to elucidate how such a research
agenda can ultimately facilitate the designing of programs, classrooms,
and instruction for ELLs.
Social/Cultural Perspectives and SLA Theory
In order to more closely define what I refer to as a sociocultural
perspective on language use and acquisition, we must look briefly
at some of the defining characteristics of traditional SLA theories
and research, and what alternatives might look like. The focus of
the field, until recently, has been on identifying both (stable)
characteristics of language and characteristics of individual language
learners. The prevailing attitude has been, “In the final
analysis . . . it is the learner who must remain at the centre of the
process, for no matter how much energy and effort we expend, it
is the learner who has to do the learning” (Nunan, 1995, p. 155).
Language has been seen as a system of words and forms that learners
must master, and research has focused on what “good language
learners” do (Naiman, Fröhlich, Stern, & Todesco, 1978; for a full
discussion see Norton & Toohey, 2001) to master them quickly
and well. Thus, meaning and knowledge reside in the head of the
individual, to “teach” a language is to be able to rank grammatical
or functional components of language in terms of ease of acquisition
and to design activities that allow the learner practice
in the discrete form/function that is the focus of the lesson, and
to “learn” a language is to come to have the characteristics and to
utilize the strategies that “good language learners” have. Language
learning is defined as the mental processes by which learners
come to organize and use features of the new language. Thus,
research focuses on identifying features of language, examining
the order of acquisition, and exploring the cognitive and psychological
processes (e.g., interlanguage formation, motivation,
cognitive styles, critical periods, learner strategies) of the learners.
The focus has been largely on formal learning, with the
learner as a generalized subject, and the search is specifically for
generalizable language rules and learner characteristics.
From a sociocultural perspective, these, in and of themselves,
just aren’t fruitful foci. The intent of this article is to posit a view
of language, learning, and teaching that sees meanings and understandings
constructed not in individual heads, but as between
humans engaged in specific situated social interactions. Thus,
looking at an individual, and/or at a learning environment or
subject matter, as a decontextualized entity neither helps us understand
the dynamics at work, nor informs us as to how scaffolding
may best be provided. Norton and Toohey (2001), in
their discussion of their shifting views of “good language learners,”
claim, “. . . understanding good language learning requires
attention to social practices in the contexts in which individuals
learn L2s . . . (and) the importance of examining the ways in
which learners exercise their agency in forming and reforming
their identities in those contexts” (p. 318). Thus, the focus of research
shifts to looking at language-in-use in communities and
among interactants, form-tied-to- (specific social) function, and
function-tied-to-social dynamics at play, including individual
and collective identities being constructed and negotiated. And
in order to better understand these, we need to understand, too,
the larger institutional and societal factors that impact and in-
fluence the social interactions and environments.
Shoua
Throughout this article, data on one focal learner, Shoua, will be
used as an exemplar of claims and theoretical constructs, in order
to show how they might look when playing out in a child who is
participating in real school practices. The data used was collected
during a yearlong research project collaboratively conducted in
a mainstream Kindergarten classroom by the teacher (Lynn) and
myself.1
Shoua’s home language was Hmong. She had been born in the
same town in which she now lived, and had even attended preschool
there. A salient factor for Shoua was that she had no siblings
close to her own age, nor did she interact with age-level
peers outside of school. She also had little exposure to English
outside of school. She scored extremely low upon kindergarten
entrance on an assessment scale for English. She did, however,
display some communicative skills. She learned some of the other
children’s names fairly quickly, would physically position herself
next to them in centers or group activities and find ways to interact
with them using limited language, and could make simple
requests and commands. She seemed self-assured and socially
oriented. The data on Shoua helps to explicate how the framework
presented below can provide understandings of how classrooms
work to support and/or constrain language and academic
development for ELLs.
Guiding Notions
There are seven core notions, which, when taken together, help us
understand how classrooms work as complex social systems, why
such a view is central to our understanding of learners’ language
and literacy development, and what sorts of questions we need to
ask to better understand these environments and processes. These
core notions are explicated below.
Communities of Learners/Communities of Practice
While these two constructs come out of slightly different fields and
traditions, I use them together to present a view of classrooms as
environments that promote “scaffolded interaction,” where “communities
of learners” engage in cultural practices, with participants
taking on various and different (“asymmetrical”) roles over time
(Rogoff, 1994). In ”communities of learners” (Rogoff, 1990,
1994) the primary focus is on the notion of learning-as/throughsocial-
interaction, where knowledge is not a commodity in the
head of an individual learner, but instead lies between people; that
is, it is an ongoing process of co-constructing meanings and
understandings through interaction. The term “communities of
practice” (Lave, 1996) switches the primary focus to people coming
together around specific tasks in specific situated practices.
While it retains the core notion of knowledge and understandings
being negotiated through social interaction, it grants a primary
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 16
place to the activity(ies) and practice(s) being engaged in as carriers
and mediators of cultural knowledge and skills (with all
knowledge and skills being defined as culturally situated and specific).
In both views, knowledge is distributed across the community,
and is not the possession of any one individual member
(Brown, 1994). Thus, we come to view classrooms as sites of specific
situated cultural and language practices, with learners coming
together to negotiate meanings and understandings.
For Shoua, social interactions provided her not only with opportunities
for participation, but with motivation as well. It was
very important to Shoua that she understand exactly what it was
that she was supposed to do, and what performances “count” in
this environment; she then employed strategies (including but not
primarily language strategies) to enable her to “succeed,” that is,
to assume the identity of a participant/learner in the classroom.
Her motivation was clearly social: She was a keen observer of the
other children and their interactions and performances, and used
mimicking and repetition extensively, as well as her knowledge of
classroom procedures and expectations, to leverage inclusion.
When the teacher asked a question, her hand shot up . . . though
when called upon she was either silent, or said, “I don’t know.”
She learned strategies that enabled her to look like she was participating
in the same ways as the other students before actually having
the English language skills to fully do so. As a result, she was
included in social interactions, which provided her an opportunity
to negotiate new language and understandings.
The next core notion explores in more detail how these negotiations
occur, and how learners come to develop the requisite
language and skills for full participation in such communities.
Zone of Proximal Development/Apprenticeship
These two constructs, combined, present a view of learning as
a process of “apprenticeship,” where apprentices collaborate in
(mediated) social practices with teachers and more expert peers to
acquire/construct new forms of interaction, language, and thinking
(Vygotsky, 1987). Vygotsky’s original conception of the
Zone of Proximal Development introduced the concept of mastery
of skills through scaffolding from “experts” (more experienced
others), thus, positing the primacy of social interaction, and the
importance of creating an environment where the skills, concepts,
and language valued in the new community were available for appropriation
by the learner through multiple modes of interaction
with those more “fluent” in the discourse of the community. The
learner, thus, could encounter and receive scaffolding to appropriate
the next level of knowledge and skills, whatever the current
stage of development might be. Helpful to our understanding
here is the notion of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave &
Wenger, 1991), which posits that, while the ultimate goal is for
learners to come to acquire the requisite skills, language, behaviors,
and understandings to become fully participating members
of new communities, as newcomers they may be peripheral participants—
that is, they may not be fully included in nor aligned
with the practices of the new community; it is the process of apprenticeship
that will norm them into the central discourse and
practices, moving them over time from the periphery to the core.
In looking at the children at play, we observed Shoua doing
“parallel play” in the make-believe house area. Because she was
miming cooking and mothering with other children present doing
the same, and because we saw her “speaking,” we assumed she
was communicating with the other children. On closer analysis,
she wasn’t. She was “speaking” either to herself or a make-believe
other, and often the “talk” was a string of disconnected words,
or a repetitive chanting of a word or phrase. She was not directly
interacting with the other children. There is much to be said in
favor of this performance, there was “learning” and language
practice evident in her play; and she was enacting performances
recognizable to and accepted by the other children (a form of
identity work). Yet she was indeed a peripheral participant because
this mode of play deprived her of the opportunity to practice
her emerging language skills through verbal communication
with her peers. Lynn had always felt that her role as teacher was
to provide scaffolding for language and learning during instructional
time; this led us to re-consider the teacher’s role in “free
choice” time as well as recess and other unstructured times.
Lynn’s intervention in the nature and participatory structures of
the activities could have been helpful to scaffold more direct verbal
interactions. This may be especially important when children,
such as Shoua, have few interactions with peers (of any
language background) or little contact with the English language
outside of school. Teacher scaffolding of language practice and
social interaction is appropriate throughout all the events of the
school day, and may be necessary to help move emergent English
speakers from the periphery to the core of the classroom
community.
Worth mentioning, too, is the concept of mediation, which
derives from Vygotsky, but has since been taken up more fully
by Vygotskian scholars (e.g. Wertsch, 1991, 1998; Zinchenko,
1995). The central idea is that understandings are constructed
through mediating tools or devices (see also Wertsch, 1991). The
importance of this is that as we encounter new experiences and
concepts, our interpretations and understandings are always mediated,
or filtered, through the means through which they are
represented. It is not only the language of face-to-face human interaction
that shapes understandings (mediates the interpretations
of messages and meanings), but this happens also through
other “tools” and artifacts represented and utilized in a given
practice. In classrooms, these tools may be texts, technological
resources, any print materials, the physical environment of the
classroom as well as nonverbal human messages (such as gestures,
body language). These tools contribute to, and mediate, the
emergent understandings being constructed by learners of the activities
and experiences in which they are embedded (Donato,
2000; Hawkins, in press b). We see this in the example above,
where Shoua’s emergent cultural understandings of “playing
house,” and the female’s role in doing so—both as a real-world
phenomenon and as a classroom activity—were shaped through
the materials available in the center and the modeling provided
by her peers. Thus, in researching classrooms, it is not solely language
interaction we must investigate, but also how cultural representations
and understandings—even identities of fledgling
participants—are being formed as new practices are mediated
through multiple classroom resources.
Multiple Social Languages
No language exists as a general thing. Rather, each language is
composed of many different “social languages,” that is, different
17 APRIL 2004
styles of language that communicate different socially situated
identities (who is acting) and socially situated activities (what is
being done). Every social language communicates in use, as it
creates and reflects specific social contexts, socially situated identities
integrally connected to social groups, cultures, and historical
formations. Thus, here there are two points central to our
conception of classrooms. The first is that this destabilizes our
traditional view of “English” as a unitary entity. It is this view of
English—as a set of definable and consistent words and grammatical
structures—that has both constructed and been constructed
by the practice and industry of ESL/EFL teaching (see
Freeman, in press). If, however, we shift to a view of classrooms
and schools as socially situated spaces where newcomers apprentice
to communities of learners in order to acquire new skills and
practices, we must acknowledge the multiplicity of language
forms and uses in play. Fluent English speakers are fluent in a
wide array of social languages, and not fluent in others. This includes
not just being able to “speak” the particular form of the
language, but having the sociocultural sophistication to know
which language is appropriate in what setting for what purpose.
This design of language features-in-context has been looked at
through multiple lenses variously as codes (Bernstein, 1990),
genres (Swales, 1990), and (capital-D) Discourses (Gee, 1996).
Gee defines Discourses as:
. . . ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing,
speaking, and often reading and writing that are accepted as instantiations
of particular roles (or ‘types of people’) by specific
groups of people, whether families of a certain sort, lawyers of a certain
sort, bikers of a certain sort, church members of a certain sort,
African-Americans of a certain sort . . . (p. viii)
Thus, using “language” appropriately is not just a matter of
words and grammar, it is part-and-parcel of a “toolkit,” where
multiple components must be packaged together correctly in
order to be recognized (and for communication to occur successfully).
And these packages represent and define our identities
in specific sociocultural contexts. This complexifies the task
of “language teaching,” as it problematizes the meaning of both
“language” and “teaching.” We need to explore and identify
not only how our learners are coming to acquire new language
skills, but what forms of languages are represented and available
to them.
There is historically in the L2 literature a divide between basic
interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive academic
learning skills (CALPS) (Cummins, 1986)—that is, between
more formal, academic language and informal social
language. It is argued that students first learn BICS—the “chit
chat” they use in socializing with their peers before moving on to
CALPS—more content-specific abstract language and forms of
expression. While this may be a useful construct for teachers, it
is not what I am talking about here. The view of language, and
language acquisition, that I am proposing problematizes the
neat distinctions rendered by such a theory. There are multiple
sorts of events, subject areas, genres of language, and discourse
and participation structures represented in the classroom, which
belie the stable and somewhat unitary concept of CALPS. And
it is not necessarily more “abstract” or “higher order” language
that’s needed—indeed part of the point here is to purposely not
“rank” forms of language by value—but apprenticeship into the
very specific multiple forms of languages and literacies represented
inside and outside of classrooms, which need not occur in
any specific predetermined order.
In Shoua’s case, one could argue that the BICS/CALPS distinction
is “flipped.” That is, much of the English that Shoua
knew and used came from her mimicking strategies, and the language
she had been exposed to (that was available to mimic)
was the language from pre-school. Thus, she had little “social” language,
but she did have some “school” language. Shoua had memorized
certain useful chunks of language, and leveraged them to
gain participatory status in the classroom. Most of her utterances
were, “I want,” “I need,” followed by a single word (e.g., “glue,”
“yellow” referring to marker color) or a single word naming an
object. She also said frequently, “I done.” She knew some whole
phrases such as “What I do?” and “write your name.” She also
knew the numbers 1 through10 and colors. But all of the language
she used was affiliated with schools and classrooms as were
her activities and behaviors. Each utterance could be directly
connected to familiar classroom vocabulary and phrases, and, notably,
instructions and directions. She spoke largely in question
or imperative form.
On one particular day, we had an “observer” (a graduate student)
detail Shoua’s language and participation across activities.
Shoua participated in a small group activity making hand shadows.
Throughout the 25-minute project, her utterances (in total)
were as follows:
S: I done.
(squeezes glue, pastes hand on paper)
S: Teacher. I done. OK, I done.
(cleans up scraps)
S: What I do?
S: (to another student): Write your name. (pause) Put paper.
A: I’m cutting.
S: Glue!
The observer noted, “Shoua uses language, but not consistently.
She especially uses it to confirm a kind of teacher-student
relationship. Most of her language use on this day was to demonstrate
that she understood directions, and completed activities,
and was capable” (field notes 10/17/2000).
During free time, when most other children played together,
Shoua frequently wrote random letters, and then pretended to
“read” them. In one instance, there was a picture of the sun on
the wall, which was labeled “sun.” Shoua copied the word down
letter by letter and brought it to show us. When asked what it
said, she replied, “Moon.” Once again the language and discourse
that Shoua could recruit bought her peripheral status as a
participant in classroom activities, but it did not buy her desirability
as a playmate. She did not display the language or behaviors
of informal play. The other children seemed to accept her,
but not to seek her out, nor initiate (nor sustain) conversation
with her as they often did with each other. Thus, Shoua had
more access to the school-based (“academic”) language and activities
of kindergarten than the social ones.
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 18
The second point is that classrooms are sites where multiple
forms of social languages converge. All participants in classroom
life—students, teachers, support staff—come with their own
array of social languages and their own understandings of where
and how to use them appropriately. In some sense, all communication
and all utterances are part of multiple ongoing conversations,
informed by and in response to other discourses that have
informed the thoughts, words, and views of the utterer (Bakhtin,
1981). None of us operate, or communicate or think in a vacuum.
The constellation of language practices particular to an individual
may be shared (to some degree) among some participants, and
conflict with those of others. But any and all are not valued
equally. Certain discourses are valued more than others in specific
institutional settings, and school is no exception. This is in
part because schools mirror the larger society and societal values
in which the particular site is situated. It is also true, however,
that schools have their own languages—academic discourses—
that are specific to schools and schooling, and students must acquire
them and be able to communicate in them fairly fluently
in order for their performances to “count” as successful. This is,
of course, easier for those students whose home language (and
literacy) practices resonate more closely with those of school than
for those who come with completely different understandings of
and ways of engaging with language and texts (Heath, 1983;
Michaels, 1981).
In one curricular initiative, we gave each child a disposable
camera, with instructions to take it home and take pictures of
things that were important to them. Lynn also explained this
ahead of time to parents. When the children returned the cameras,
Lynn had the pictures developed, then made a book by attaching
one picture per page, with room below to write the
“text.” We felt that this would ensure that children had knowledge
of the subject matter, motivation and “ownership,” and that
it would serve to introduce them to each other’s worlds. We had
the children first share their books in a small group, tell their
classmates what the pictures were, then have a question and answer
period. We hoped that this would provide scaffolding for
their texts by giving them ideas as to what might be interesting
to others about the pictures (a sense of audience), and the sorts
of things that might be said. They then individually dictated the
text to Lynn as she wrote it in the book. All but two of the children
took the cameras home and returned with pictures that fell
into the following categories: their families, houses, rooms, toys,
and pets. Shoua, however, took her camera to the zoo, and took
pictures of the animals there. There were no people represented
at all. This led to real interrogation, on our parts, of our cultural
assumptions. What does it mean to ask: What’s important to
you? We hadn’t considered that there are cultural scripts and discourses
attached, and that understandings about “what counts”
and what’s valued might serve to marginalize the students we designed
the project specifically to include.
Identities/Positioning
The socially situated identities participants in social interaction
take on at any given time are a complex integration of their diverse
sociocultural experiences, the sociocultural experiences of
others in the interaction, the structure and flow of language, participation
and negotiation in the interaction, and the larger cultural
and institutional settings within which the interactions take
place. In order to discuss or research the construction of identities
in classrooms, we must first propose an understanding of
identity not as the core of an individual’s being, or as a set of fixed
characteristics, but as changing, fluid, and multiple. Gee (2001)
defines identity as “being recognized as a certain “kind of person,”
in a given context . . . ” (p. 99). He further states that “. . . all people
have multiple identities connected not to their ‘internal
states’ but to their performances in society” (p. 99). We all assume
different identities in different social contexts and encounters.
The language and behaviors I recruit, the knowledge
and experience base I draw from, as well as the material tools I
utilize, and the way I dress, among other factors, are very different
when I am reading my young son a bedtime story than when
I am, say, teaching a graduate class. I am drawing on a different
schema, and in some cases perhaps even a different belief system,
as I enact different, and sometimes contradictory, practices (I
don’t, for example, tolerate the same behaviors from my students
as I do from my son, make the same demands, or interact in the
same ways around text), which align with my understandings of
the social and institutional contexts within which I am positioned.
My ability to successfully participate in diverse social situations
and roles relies on my ability to recruit multiple identities
(and the attendant behaviors and D/discourses), and to know
which is appropriate for what purpose and when. This, then, complexifies
the task of language teaching, and problematizes just
what it is we are teaching ELLs in schools. Certainly, we want
ELLs to become successful participants in their new community(
ies). But if we define “success” as being able to recruit the
appropriate identities (and social languages) for any particular
situated activity and practice in which they may wish to participate,
then our task is enormous. Perhaps a teacher’s primary goal
is to support his or her learners to become successful participants
in school (academic) communities. If so, then we must fully understand
not only the “language,” but the behaviors, attitudes,
tools, and ways of engaging that learners will need to recognizably
display the identity of a successful student.
As Norton (2000) so rightly points out, however, identities are
not something one can simply choose. She defines identity as
“how a person understands his or her relationship to the world,
how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and
how the person understands possibilities for the future” (p. 5).
Identities are ongoingly co-constructed, in specific situated practices,
through the minute-by-minute unfolding of social interaction,
and shaped by the subjects’ understandings of the social
world within which they are positioned. In situated social interaction,
participants certainly make identity claims; that is, they
attempt to present themselves as certain “sorts of people” through
the language and communicative strategies they use (Hacking,
1986). Their prior experiences and diverse sociocultural memberships
deeply influence the sorts of identity claims they make,
the ways in which they make them, and the nature of the social
interaction itself (Bernstein, 1990). But the other participants,
and the interaction—in terms of the way language is used and
participation is structured—“summon” or “invite” participants
to take on certain sorts of identities (Fairclough, 1992). (Any and
all are not available choices, even if the participants have the sociocultural
awareness to assess what’s appropriate and desirable.)
19 APRIL 2004
Furthermore, these situated identities only “work” if they are recognized
and taken up in the interaction. Identities are, thus, deeply
linked to the positioning work that is always operant throughout
social encounters and interactions, and possibilities and constraints
are determined, in large part, through the power and status relations
of the participants in the interaction (Cummins, 2000;
Hawkins, 2000). Thus, if our goal is to outline a research agenda
that begins to account for classroom interaction, we must include
a close examination of identity work in social interaction, and
ways in which positioning is negotiated (Hawkins, 2000, in press
b). It is just these socially constructed identities and positions
that determine access and engagement for our learners, and that
mediate their understandings of social and cultural (including
academic) experiences and practices.
Through our data on Shoua we can exemplify ways in which
she consistently made bids for a participant identity in activities.
(As discussed earlier, a desire to be actively part of this community
motivated her actions, including the development of behavioral
and language strategies.) The data also offer opportunities to
analyze what factors impacted her abilities to make participant
claims, and the reactions of her peers to these claims.
In the camera project, we had Shoua participate in groups
where others shared their pictures before we had her share hers,
thinking that others’ performances would constitute models for
her. Early on, she never initiated a comment, and when invited
in (by Lynn or me, never by her peers) she remained silent. We
can hypothesize that the structure and content of this activity was
new to her; she did not know rules for participation (what was
expected), nor, as discussed earlier, did she share understandings
of the lived lives and value systems of the other children. A typical
sequence:
Lynn: Anybody else have a question? Shoua, you don’t want
to know anything about this?
Ian: I have another question.
Maggie: Let’s ask Shoua if there’s anything she wants to know.
Anything? (long silence) Okay.
When she begins to participate, well into the activity, it is still
only upon teacher invitation. She formulates one question, which
she asks three separate children at three separate times. She says,
looking at a picture, “Why Michael funny?” “Why his mouth
funny?” (referring to a child’s brother), and “Why his face
funny?” (referring to a child’s dad). Unfortunately, there was
nothing “funny” about these pictures, so the children didn’t understand
the questions and couldn’t and/or didn’t answer them.
What Shoua was asking, in each case, was why the people in the
pictures were smiling or laughing. We can see her try to utilize
the vocabulary she possesses to find different ways to phrase her
question as her contributions aren’t taken up and she realizes that
she isn’t understood. In the first case, Michael was happy, but not
“being funny.” Worse, in the other two cases, Shoua actually offended
the children by suggesting that one’s brother had a “funny
mouth,” and the other’s Dad had a “funny face.” Here, the language
barrier not only excluded her from successful participation,
it erected a social barrier between her and the other children by
causing offence. Thus, her bids for participation were rejected; she
received no response at all; other children jumped in with questions
and comments, and the discussion went on without her.
Shoua’s pictures were all of zoo animals. We were concerned
that this major difference in the nature of the pictures would be
perceived as “weird” by the other children. Also, we were worried
about Shoua’s ability to describe initially the pictures to the
other children in the group (as was the established format of the
activity). So Lynn had her practice by going through the pictures
in Hmong with the Hmong paraprofessional in the school. For
the first picture shared in the group setting, Lynn said, “Okay,
Shoua, tell us about this picture.” And she didn’t say anything.
We encouraged her. Nothing. Then one of the children said,
“What is it?” and another “What is his name?” and she said, “I
don’t know.” She did not know the word in English for lemur.
So we opened it up to the group, and none of the children knew
what it was called. They guessed “raccoon.” Once we supplied
the name (which, we hypothesize, equalized the playing field) the
children were very involved. They focused the questions and discussion
on Shoua, as was by now the accepted format. And Shoua
could participate, either by using some “chunks” she knew (in response
to “Where did you see it?” she said, “At the zoo”), nodding
yes or no in response to specific questions (“Are these your favorite
animals?”), or repeating what someone else has just said:
David: What’s that? (pointing)
Ian: That’s the sunshine.
Shoua: Dat’s de sunshine.
By bringing in pictures that resonated with the children’s interests
and experiences, by utilizing strategies that she had developed
to leverage inclusion, and through an activity structure that
enabled her to “have the floor” (as opposed to needing strategies
to claim it), she successfully gained a participatory identity in this
activity. These pictures bought her status in the group; the children
thought they were “cool.”
Power/Status
Thus far, I have argued that meaning and social relationships are
interdependent and co-determinous, with all social interactions
situated in specific local contexts. The larger picture, however, is
that each interaction is always situated in larger social, institutional,
and community contexts, which have their own directive
force. They have embedded ideologies, beliefs, and values, which
are carried out and reproduced through the unfolding social interactions.
From a discourse perspective, power and knowledge are
inseparable (Foucault, 1980). Knowledge is a form of power, and
it is power that validates and enforces specific claims to know in
specific ways. Power is a social construction, which privileges certain
ideas, relationships, and meanings while disempowering, or
marginalizing, others. In the positioning work discussed above,
while interactants make bids for identities, all identities are not
equally available to everyone in the interaction. Nor does each participant’s
voice carry equal weight; some are heard and taken up,
others ignored and perhaps even resisted. This is due, in large part,
to the value systems and power relations operant in the environment,
which reflect those of the larger community within which
the specific local environment is situated. On the flip side, the
identities that learners make bids for in a given social interaction
may represent their attempts to conform to or resist the dominant
norms, beliefs, and practices of the environment, especially
when they perceive that these position them in non-beneficial or
non-complimentary ways (Canagarajah, 1999; Cummins, 2000;
Norton, 2000).
One specific research tool we utilized was an observation protocol.
For this we shadowed focal children throughout a school
day (individually), writing down every 20 minutes exactly what
they were doing, with whom, and what verbal interactions (if
any) they were engaged in. This meant that we had “snapshots”
of languages, behaviors, interactions, and performances across
and throughout multiple events, and could search for patterns.
One significant pattern that emerged was this: throughout the
school day, and especially when Shoua was not in her classroom,
she was often shut out of interactions during instructional time.
It is notable that, when working with any adult except Lynn
(e.g., in art, at lunch, at gym class, and with other support staff
in the classroom), Shoua volunteered to do virtually every task
and answer every question asked, thus conforming to the participation
norms of the classroom. Yet she was never once selected.
She became invisible. In one instance, she was working with an
adult as part of a small group on an art project. The adult and
five children were sitting at a round table, with Shoua to the immediate
right of the adult. The adult positioned herself such that
she faced and included the other children but had her shoulder
blocking Shoua. Shoua made numerous attempts to show her the
finished project, and was completely ignored until a final “that’s
nice,” despite extensive ongoing conversations with the other
children about what they were doing. This may have been because
the adult did not feel that Shoua would be able to participate
in extended conversations about her work, and the exclusion
was certainly unintentional. Yet this represents one way in which
messages are conveyed to children about their value within the
school community, and who they can be there.
Jay Lemke (1995), in defining the term ideology, says that
“. . . there are some very common meanings we have learned to
make, and take for granted as common sense, but which support
the power of one social group to dominate another” (p. 2). As
microcosms of the larger societies and communities within which
they are situated, classrooms and schools are rife with inequitable
power relations. These, in turn, confer differing statuses to members
of the divergent social groups represented. All the texts, materials,
resources, curricula, instructional and program designs,
and interactions—the mediating devices in the environment—
are encoded with messages about who and what count, for what,
and how. And this deeply constrains as well as directs the possibilities
and forms of negotiations and understandings that form
the knowledge construction work of the classroom.
Multiple literacies
This represents a major shift in how we define literacy. Just as “language”
is not simply the ability to manipulate words in correct
grammatical structures, “literacy” is not simply the ability to encode
and decode print. The “new literacy studies” propose a view
of “literacies” as the requisite knowledge and skills to send and interpret
messages through multiple media and modes in (rapidly
changing) local and global contexts, and to align meanings within
situated social practices (New London Group, 1996/1999). A variety
of scholars from a variety of fields are pointing out the rapid
changes in communication design, function, and mode in our
rapidly changing world. As we move toward ever-more-global
economies, and constant re-design of our means and methods of
local and distance communications, we need to re-think what
communicative (language and discourse) skills it will take to participate
successfully in that world, and how our school practices
do or don’t provide access to those skills and forms of participation.
This is, of course, clear when we discuss technological skills
(which must be included in our definition of “literacy skills”). But
it is not just keyboard and computer competency in question here.
Modern communication has different design features, organized
in different patterns and constellations, which call for instant
recognition via multiple forms of cognition simultaneously. The
ways in which information is packaged, delivered, and put into use
have changed dramatically. In discussing what he terms “informationalism”
(taken from Castells, 1996), Warschauer (2000) states,
“Increasingly, nonnative speakers will need to use the language
daily for presentation of complex ideas, international collaboration
and negotiation, and location and critical interpretation of
rapidly changing information” (p. 511). This goes far beyond
school-based notions of literacy as decoding print, and has crucial
implications for classroom practice. It carries crucial implications,
as well, for inter-cultural communication, multilingualism,
and identity formation within social groups, as people both individually
and collectively struggle to construct new social practices
that reflect new social orders (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996)
and understandings.
Multiliteracies may be a bit more difficult to define and identify
in a kindergarten classroom than in one with older learners.
There have been studies done, for example, on differences in literacies
evoked for teenagers’ and adults’ participation in Internet
list serves and chatrooms than those more traditionally used in
school sites (Hawkins, in press b; Lam, 2000), and what children
learn from video games and gaming (Gee, 2003). There have also
been discussions about semiotics in design change of visual
media, including, but not limited to, text and print (Kress, 2003;
Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001).
In this kindergarten, children are engaged in emergent (and
traditional) practices with letter recognition, knowledge about
print and text, number recognition and counting, and patterning.
Another form of literacy required for successful participation
in this and all classrooms is the ability to “read school.” Students
must be able not only to understand classroom expectations
around learning and behaviors, but also to perform them in recognizable
ways. And Shoua, as already discussed, was intent on
mastering strategies to display performances that would “count,”
and provide her with the identity of a participant. However, what
Shoua had access to, and opportunities to practice, was limited to
the specific designated literacy practices of classrooms. The daily
routines provided structures for her to appropriate—in Vygotskian
terms, for apprenticeship and eventual internalization. Thus, we
have ample examples of her using strategies such as the following:
1. Repetition and mimicking (Lynn asks, “What starts with
O?” Students chorally, “Owl.” Shoua mouths, “Ooooww”).
2. Physically positioning herself and using her body in ways
that advantage her, both by providing proximity to activities
and performances and by miming participation without
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 20
language (Lynn reviewing numbers at chart, children sitting
on floor, Shoua sits right in front. As Lynn writes “6” on
chart, Shoua traces the number with her finger on the rug).
3 Leveraging “school language” to maximum effect (she consistently
says, “Teacher, I done, I done,” with each activity
to display competence; she initiates contact using colors
and numbers during play time- “I got 1, 2, 3, 4” to count
rice cakes).
4. Displaying recognizable school behaviors (raises hand and
volunteers to almost everything, though often silent when
called on).
One place, however, that consistently presented barriers to
participation was the intertextual practices of the children when
they drew on texts and literacies that they brought from other
contexts. So, for example, when Shoua is parallel playing in the
housekeeping area with the other girls, all are enacting versions
of keeping house and mothering, drawing on diverse cultural
scripts, but with convergent areas. The others, however, began to
integrate “Barbie” into the discourse, discussing Barbie’s house,
Barbie’s sister, and Barbie’s boyfriend. Shoua is silenced; she does
not have the knowledge or resources to participate. Likewise,
during an activity (discussed earlier) when Lynn is discussing
telescopes and has a chart of the solar system, Shoua draws a large
yellow circle. Beneath it, she carefully writes S-U-N (copying
from the poster), then points to it and says, “Moon.” Still, she is
participating appropriately in the activity. Then Joseph adds
Buzz Lightyear to his drawing, and the other children begin to
add stars and rockets and spacemen, elaborating on the Toy Story
theme verbally and through the drawings. They quote bits of the
movie, and act out parts while drawing characterizations from
the movie. Shoua once more is silenced, she does not “count” in
this particular literacy activity.
Classroom as ecology
This metaphor accurately portrays a view of classrooms as ecological
systems: the co-dependence of factors that together construct
and define the nature of the learning that takes place.
Through the six notions described above, a perspective develops
that places social interaction at the hub of meaning making and
knowledge and skill acquisition. Classrooms are complex ecosystems,
where all of the participants, the practices, the beliefs, the
forms of language, the forms of literacies, the social, historical and
institutional context(s), the identity and positioning work, the
politics and power relations, the mediational tools and resources,
the activity and task designs, and the influences of the multiple
local and global communities within which they are situated
come together in fluid, dynamic, and ever-changing constellations
of interactions, each one impacting the other. This is not a
static process, but one that shifts with each new move/interaction,
and as new organisms enter the environment, as ecological systems
do. It is a fragile balance, and in order for it to “work”—to
have the inhabitant life forms survive and prosper—we need to
understand not only the individual components, but also the
ways in which the patterns and the ebb and flow of contacts and
engagements result from and contribute to the whole.
Through the examples provided above and others we came to
understand Shoua differently as a learner. We recognized her motivation
and efforts, and the interconnectedness between her so-
21 APRIL 2004
cial interactions and affiliations and language development, and
even between social interactions, identity, and the strategies she
developed. We recognized, too, affordances and constraints of
the classroom and instructional design, and new ways to provide
scaffolding. We could clearly see her language and literacy development
as tied to her social identity (and status) within the
classroom environment, and within the larger school environment,
and how the lack of representations and understandings
of her culture and language impacted her school identity and
learning. We realized that academic instruction, no matter how
well prepared, isn’t enough to ensure language learning and academic
competence for all students. And we saw how social status
affects participation, and how participation affords status and
access to more language and interaction. We came to see the
teachers’ role as managing the ecology, as opposed to designing
instruction, with the notion of “ecology” spanning not only the
classroom, but also the school day and all the activities therein.
Classrooms and ELLs
Much of the framework I have proposed, though illustrated
through examples of an English-language learner, is applicable to
all learners in classrooms. So what specifically is different about
ELLs? Teaching “English” to learners is becoming increasingly
complex as the number of newcomers grows, their backgrounds
become increasingly diverse, and the politics around “best programs”
and “best practices” shift. How does this framework directly
apply to these issues, and help inform us as to what best
practices and supportive environments might be?
To begin with, we must rid ourselves of the assumption that
good teaching results in language learning and academic success.
It is simply not true that we can find the right method, and the
right approach, to “fix” ELLs. One benefit to the perspective proposed
here is that it causes us to complexify our view of our learners,
and what it is that is occurring in their schooling. It dispels
the notion of ELLs as “deficient”—that is, lacking in skills and
knowledge that other children come with; they are simply socialized
into different (but equally valuable) communities of
practice. It also dispels the notion—still all too prevalent among
teachers—that in order to “fix the problem” families need to be
taught to engage with language and literacy, and to parent, “just
like us.” If we accept the notions of multiple languages and multiple
literacies, then students are and can be members of multiple
discourses and communities, as we all are. They can also negotiate
and assume multiple and varying identities that resonate with
multiple social groups, as we all do. School is only one of the
environments/communities to which they apprentice. They are
being exposed to new discourses of schools and schooling in new
environments, but they are embedded in the beliefs, values, and
practices of their families and communities, and maybe in those
of schooling in other cultural environments. They must, while
they are receiving messages about who they are and who they can
be (what sorts of identities are desirable and available in this new
environment), learn to negotiate very different social worlds, and
to send, receive, and interpret (explicit and nonexplicit) messages
in very different ways. This means not only acquiring new vocabulary
and grammatical structures, but also the sociocultural
competence to successfully negotiate an identity as a “learner” in
school that will be recognized and accepted.
We need to explore, just a little more closely, what those negotiations
might entail. Those who have worked with ELLs know
that the label itself does not convey adequately the diversity of
the learners. We know from studies of early language and literacy
socialization (e.g., Heath, 1983) that children, even very
young children, come to school with culturally embedded notions
about language and literacy—what appropriate ways are of
using language in various contexts; what literacy is for; how print
and text function. We also know that students come to school
with differing discursive resources: ways of verbally participating
in social interaction (including school-based interactions), ways
of representing everyday cognition. And we know, as well, that
the language students use is intricately tied up with their ways of
perceiving and thinking, and their cognitive skills and processes.
These notions have been addressed extensively in educational research
and literature. However, much of that literature has focused
on students who speak nonstandard dialects of English,
and/or come from backgrounds where the discursive and literacy
practices of the home community differ from those of school,
and result in the inability of those students to perform successfully
in the language and literacy practices required to succeed in
school (Cazden, 1988; Heath, 1983; Lee, 1993; Michaels, 1981).
For ELLs, however, there may be an additional layer of complexity.
While they also often arrive at school from homes and
communities where the language and literacy practices diverge
vastly from those required by school, they also often do not have
basic competency in communicating in any variety of English,
and may lack prior exposure to almost any practices (in any language)
around text and print. Furthermore, although (as mentioned
earlier) the ESL literature has extensively addressed the
difference between social forms of language and academic forms
(Cummins, 1986; Faltis, 1997) there has been little focus on identifying
the specific forms and features of language and participation
that a student must be able to recruit and display to be
recognized as a “successful student.” And there has been, as well,
a lack of attention to the relationships between the engagement
in social interaction and access to the various requisite discourses
of school.
These differ significantly in elementary classrooms from those
of middle- and high schools. In kindergarten, for example, all
children are learning to read in English, to understand how print
and text function in schools. And all children are newcomers to
school (though some have been to preschool), and are negotiating
new identities and new social formations in a new environment.
What may differ for ELLs of all ages is the lack of access
to the privileged linguistic codes; greater variance in understandings
of what school, learning, and literacies mean and might look
like; different patterns of communication, interactions, beliefs,
and behaviors; and differing experiences with and exposures to
the natural and lived world.
Designing a Research Agenda: The What
So what is it that we need to know to inform us in the design and
management of supportive and viable classroom ecologies? What
knowledge will help us, as researchers, theorizers, and teachers,
think about our roles in contributing to the knowledge base of
the field, and to the education of our learners? Here are some sample
questions that begin to “get at” what we might need to know:
1. What forms of language and literacy are represented in
classrooms?
2. What are the social and academic practices required for
successful participation in classroom communities?
3. What are connections (or disconnections) between the
home discourse practices and social relations and those
expected at school?
4. To which forms of language, and which practices and interactions,
do ELLs have access (and when), and what
supports this access?
5. How can “funds of knowledge” (Moll et al., 1992) be incorporated
into the classroom curriculum?
6. What identities are available in mainstream classrooms
for those who come with non-mainstream language and
literacy experiences, and how do these identities impact
social relations and learning?
7. How do social relations impact access to the discourses of
the classroom?
8. What interaction patterns are represented in instructional
design and activities, and to what effect?
9. What representations are embedded in the classroom,
school, and community environment as to beliefs and values
around status and equity (including students’ native languages
and cultures), and how are these messages conveyed?
10. What strategies do ELLs employ to facilitate access to
classroom practice, and how are these taken up or resisted
by others?
11. What strategies do native speakers use to invite and/or
scaffold participation from ELLs, and how are these taken
up or resisted?
12. How are negotiations managed?
13. What outside-of-school factors have an impact on social
and academic interactions in the classroom?
14. What is the role, and impact, of L1 & C1 in the classroom?
15. How are parents/families included in the school and classroom
community, and connected to the curricular and
instructional practices?
Designing a Research Agenda: The Who
The questions above begin to describe what a research agenda
from a sociocultural perspective might look like. If, however, we
assume that the reason for conducting research is to better understand
how language and literacy acquisition processes work in
classrooms in order to facilitate the management of programmatic,
classroom, and instructional design for second language learners,
then we must also address who is conducting the research and
theorizing about these spaces. It is critical that the research be designed
and conducted collaboratively between those traditionally
designated as “experts” in SLA theory and research and the classroom
practitioner. There is, in educational research, a growing
acceptance of teacher research, though (as Gallas, 2001, notes)
university research and teacher research exist in parallel worlds,
with different status. I am advocating neither “teacher research”
nor the traditional variety, but a truly collaborative undertaking.
There are two arguments to be made. The first, well known in academics,
is the theory/practice divide. Simply put, if “ivory tower”
academics conduct the research and construct the educational theory,
it has little or no impact on teachers or classroom practice. It’s
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 22
“us” vs. “them,” and may in fact have a negative impact as it promotes
and perpetuates resistance due, in large part, to the hierarchical
nature of the discrete roles.
The second is, in effect, an application of the theoretical framework
we have constructed above to the world of academic research.
In order for research to be efficacious, we need to create,
in essence, communities of researchers/practitioners. This calls
for a shift in our conceptualization of participant roles. Rather
than a view of the classroom teacher as “practitioner,” and the
university academic as “researcher,” both would be equally valued
participants in this community, and the labels applied equally
to both. Both conduct the research collaboratively (though contributing
different sources of expertise and knowledge), and
“practitioner” has a double meaning here. Both are involved in
classroom pedagogy and interaction (though again offering different
contributions and forms of participation), and both are
formulating questions, designing research, and collecting and analyzing
data together. In this way, meanings and interpretations
are constructed through the unfolding interactions as part of the
social practice, each participant in the community of (educational
research) practice offers expertise and interpretations by
recruiting views, beliefs, understandings, behaviors, and knowledge
rooted in their cultures and discourses, thus constructing an
environment rich with multiple texts, resources, and discourses
available for the other to appropriate. Through extended interactions,
they apprentice to each others’ social worlds, creating
new understandings and practices.
In the research project drawn from here, Lynn (the classroom
teacher) and I jointly conducted an in-depth analysis of the sorts
of knowledge we each recruited to inform our contributions to our
discussions and work. Samplings of the areas in which she directly
represented “expert” knowledge were teachers’ thinking and practices;
principals’ and administrators’ goals and concerns; specific
classroom practices and events; individual students; students’ families;
local cultures, communities and dialects; and age- and gradeappropriate
development. As the “university researcher,” I made
knowledge claims about SLA theory, “best practice” for ELLs,
classroom observations, research design and methodology, literature
relevant to the field, and academic discourse. It was the
blending and weaving of these diverse discourses and knowledge
bases that made our inquiries so rich; in essence we developed a
hybrid discourse—a “third space” in which we could co-construct
our designs and interpretations. Neither of us alone could have
designed the project, nor yielded the insights, nor seen so clearly
and fully the implications of our work.
Conclusion
In this article, I have articulated a sociocultural perspective on
language and learning in classrooms and schools, and discussed
the significance of such a perspective for researching SLA in classrooms.
This work, however, begs the following questions: What
is the research in service of? How is it useful? And for whom?
It seems to me that one consequence of re-envisioning a
framework for SLA is a different articulation of teachers’ goals
for ELLs, and of teachers’ roles in helping them reach those goals.
Their job, rather than “teaching English,” is to offer students access
to the range of knowledge, abilities, and forms of language
(discourses) that will enable them to lay claim to the social identities
that afford them a participant status in the social communities
of their choice, and to provide scaffolding (and a truly supportive
environment) for the attainment of these. The role of
research, then, is to define more closely what these knowledge
bases, abilities, and forms of language may be, how exactly they
function in interaction, and how to afford access and proficiency.
As may be clear from the research with Shoua, in some sense
many of the discrete questions and observations may not differ
altogether from those of traditional SLA research. We discussed,
in fact, Shoua’s motivation, strategies, and interlanguage. What
differs is the ability to view these as discrete decontextualized factors.
Shoua’s motivation was part and parcel of her social world,
her strategies constructed through and for interaction with others
and deeply tied to her understandings of her status and context
(as well as her understandings of what school and education
are). Those understandings, and her performances, are tied to her
background and experiences in home and community contexts
(other D/discourses). And her interlanguage developed in tandem
with these, formed by them and contributing to them as
well. So how does this research, and what we learned about Shoua,
inform us as teachers and researchers?
As teachers, we shift the task of “teaching” to not only designing
lessons-as-(inter)activity around content, but also to paying
attention to the ways in which the environment provides
access to social engagement around the multiple genres and forms
of languages and literacies that students will need to master and
perform; to connecting curriculum and pedagogy to the knowledge,
communication and interaction patterns, and practices of
the home; to designing an environment that values all students
(and languages and cultures they represent); and to promoting
and supporting equitable social and power relations. It is not our
role, or goal, to “fix” these students—but, by participating in
communities of research/practice, to continually re-envision and
re-formulate what “best practice” and healthy, viable ecologies
might be for particular learners in particular contexts.
As researchers, we need to explore as closely as possible the
ways in which the discrete factors function dialogically—each
taking from, contributing to, and altering the ecology—in specific
situated contexts. In order to do this, the work must be informed
by a synthesis of our knowledge of our field/s and local
(“insider”) information, understandings and perspectives. It is
not our role, or goal, to judge—but, by participating in communities
of research/practice, to ongoingly participate in the
construction of insights and theories that can transform educational
practice to increase access and engagement in these communities
for ELLs. It is when these roles come together that we
are positioned to make the most powerful contributions.
NOTES
The data cited in the article came from a research project funded by the
Spencer Foundation Small Grants Program. Without their support,
the willing and enthusiastic participation of the children and families
in the focal classroom, the school staff, and especially the expertise and
contributions of Lynn Legler, the classroom teacher, this work would
not have been possible.
1 The project, funded by the Spencer Foundation, was a form of collaborative
action research in which the classroom teacher (Lynn) and I designed
and implemented curricular initiatives, collected data on student
23 APRIL 2004
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 24
performances and classroom interaction, together analyzed data, and then
utilized findings to redesign classroom curriculum and activities.
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AUTHOR
MARGARET R. HAWKINS is an Assistant Professor in the Department
of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin at Madison,
225 N. Mills Street, Madison, WI 53706; mhawkins@education.
wisc.edu. Her research interests include applications of social/cultural
theories of languages and literacies to English learners in schools, language
teacher education, and cross-cultural perspectives on home-school
relations.
Manuscript submitted August 10, 2003
Revisions received November 29 and December 31, 2003
Manuscript accepted January 19, 2004