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$24.95 paper
Details:
ISBN: 0-916690-39-3
ISBN-13: 9780916690397
Book Format: paper, 468 Pages
Pub. Date:
2001
Perspectives on Language and Literacy
Beyond the Here and Now
Edited by Sarah W. Beck and Leslie Nabors Olah
The range of methodologies, perspectives, and research areas in language and literacy has exploded over the past ten years. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, a new publication from the Harvard Educational Review, provides a comprehensive overview of these trends and developments. In chapter after chapter, researchers, educators, sociologists, and linguists provide theoretical, empirical, and critical evaluations of language and literacy education; sociocultural examinations of language acquisition; and research on the developmental spectrum of language and literacy practices-from preschoolers to adults, with first and second language learners, in the United States and abroad.Presenting an overview of historical trends and current ideas, Perspectives on Language and Literacy acts as both an introduction to research and theory and a starting point for new scholarship. Classic articles provide historical grounding and important insights, and carefully chosen recent articles introduce readers to cutting-edge thinking in rapidly developing areas such as critical theory, bilingualism, and cross-linguistic studies.
Praise:
"Perspectives on Language and Literacy: Beyond the Here and Now deftly tracks seminal shifts in cutting-edge ideas, arguments, and research on education over the last thirty-five years. Readers intrigued by the Big Ideas that have influenced North American research in education from 1964 on will find no better source than the rich, telling, and fascinating account narrated by this timely compilation of important papers from the Harvard Educational Review."--Martin Nystrand, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“The Editors of the Harvard Educational Review have provided a great service to educational scholars by assembling, in a single volume, some of the most important theoretical and empirical examinations of language and literacy of the past forty years. Taken as a set, this collection offers incredible range. We encounter the entire developmental spectrum of language and literacy practices from preschoolers to adults at work and home. We learn about issues of practice and policy for both first and second language learners, in the United States and abroad. And we meet the full range of academic disciplines, epistemological perspectives, and methodological approaches that have marked the study of language and literacy during this period. One could use the collection as the cornerstone of a rigorous and exciting graduate seminar, or just enjoy revisiting so many classics without having to track them down in a library.”
--P. David Pearson, Michigan State University
“Perspectives on Language and Literacy, a set of seminal readings from the Harvard Educational Review, will provide valuable insights to anyone who works with students or devises educational policy. The book explores questions of language and literacy from a variety of perspectives, and includes venerable classics that should be in every educator’s library. Some of the authors are cognitive developmentalists interested in children’s mental processes, while others take a sociocultural approach; several chapters deal with bilingualism and crosslinguistic issues, and the book’s final section provides critical evaluation of language and literacy education. This volume provides a welcome set of readings on these complicated questions.
--Jean Berko Gleason, Boston University
About the Editors:
Sarah W. Beck is a doctoral student in Language and Literacy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research centers on secondary school writing instruction and assessment; her other professional interests include reading comprehension, discourse analysis, and the relationships among writing, reading, and critical thinking.Leslie Nabors Olah is a doctoral student in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her current research involves crosslinguistic comparisons of early language acquisition.